


Call It Magic

by tastewithouttalent



Series: Every Little Thing [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Soul Eater, Soul Eater Not!
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Awkward Conversations, Blow Jobs, Chess, Childhood Friends, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Graduation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Innuendo, Living Together, M/M, Magic, Making Out, Marriage, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:35:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 32
Words: 65,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6187636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Sizemore,' Akane repeats, the name he was reaching for falling into place in his head. 'Nice to meet you. Do you want to partner up for class?'" Akane Hoshi carries the weight of his pureblood lineage with him to Hogwarts. Clay Sizemore just wants to pass his classes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Illuminate

Akane’s been looking forward to his first day of classes for a year.

His family has talked about Hogwarts for most of his life, of course; he sees the seal every morning on the wall of the entryway, the shape of the school’s crest laid almost as an afterthought over the ornate detailing on the Slytherin banner set into the wall with silver and emeralds. Akane knows what house he’ll be Sorted into, has known since he was old enough to understand what Hogwarts meant that he was destined to attend as the latest representative for magical genius from his family’s bloodline. It wasn’t until he was ten and out with his mother while she perused the selection of the city bookstore and left him to polite small talk with the cashier that he realized there were other houses than Slytherin, that Ravenclaw and Gryffindor and Hufflepuff even existed. The idea of there being other houses -- other kinds of people than those he is around all day, than the kind of person he knows himself intuitively to be -- was the most thrilling part of that entire trip, and he spent the remaining year before his admission letter arrived absorbing as much information as he could from the histories available in the estate’s library. By the time he took his seat below the wide brim of the Sorting Hat, he knew the framework for all four houses, and the kind of people that were sorted into them, and when the Hat called “Slytherin!” loud enough for the room to hear, Akane knew the assignment as a true reflection of himself rather than just of his last name.

The first night is hectic, a frenzy of voices and food and more people his age than Akane has ever seen before, the room filled with dozens of students across seven years of age all chattering excitement about the new first-years. It’s all more than Akane can keep track of and more than enough to keep him smiling; by the time he follows the sweep of the older Slytherins and his new house members down to the underground dormitories, he’s sure he’ll be too excited to sleep.

He’s not the only one. By the next morning at breakfast all the first years look hazy, dragging over their toast and tea until Akane sees more than one who appears in active danger of drowning themselves in their breakfast cereal. For himself the first cup of tea helps, and the second makes him feel almost alive again, and by the time he’s heading to his first course -- Defense Against the Dark Arts, it says across the top of his schedule -- he’s found the energy for radiant excitement again, can feel himself trembling with enthusiasm as he finds his way to the classroom and lets himself into a room filled with the strained silence of uncertain first-years like himself. It’s a shared class, as most of the first-year courses are -- this one looks to be Akane’s new housemates in green ties to match the one he donned this morning, plus the latest additions to Hufflepuff house clustered together on one side of the classroom in an array of wide eyes and nervous-hunched shoulders. Akane considers the unfamiliar faces, trying to call up names from the Ceremony yesterday to match the shock of red hair belonging to one of his new classmates or the over-tall slouch of one of the Hufflepuffs; he’s in the process of trying to remember the name of a blond boy at the back of the classroom with his yellow tie knotted off-center against his collar when the door to the back of the room comes open and a woman in black and yellow stumbles through the doorway.

“I’m so sorry!” is the first thing she blurts. “I checked where the room was yesterday and I could have sworn I knew how to get here but I must have taken the wrong stairway because I ended up in the Potions classroom when classes were supposed to start.” She lifts her head, pushes a weight of yellow hair back from her face as she frowns at the room; her left eye is covered by an eyepatch, the black line of the strap cutting cleanly through the yellow of her hair. “This is first-year Defense, right? Hufflepuffs and Slytherins?”

“Yes,” Akane says, his response lost amid the mumbling affirmatives from the rest of the class.

The woman heaves a sigh of relief. “Oh good,” she says. “Hello everyone, I’m Marie Mjolnir. This is Defense Against the Dark Arts class, one of your required courses; I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of you over the next seven years. And you’ll be seeing a lot of each other, so we might as well get started making friends right away.” She claps her hands and Akane sees where this is going, is moving to get up from his seat even before she says, “Pair up and we’ll run through a quick exercise in dueling!” There’s a murmur of stress from the rest of the classroom, the other first years hesitating as they look at each other with wide eyes; the blond Hufflepuff freezes in his seat, his shoulders tensing with unmistakeable panic at this order. It makes Akane smile, and then he’s across the room, and reaching out to touch the other boy’s shoulder, and the Hufflepuff is startling and turning to stare up at him instead of at the rest of the room.

“Hi there,” Akane says, and offers his hand. “I’m Akane Hoshi.”

“Oh.” The boy blinks away from Akane’s face to look down at his hand instead. Akane can see the hesitance in his movement as he reaches out to take Akane’s grip, can feel the uncertainty as he closes his fingers into what is clearly an unfamiliar gesture; Akane’s the more gentle with his hold for that, more careful in guiding the other’s hand through the motions of a handshake. By the time he lets go a little of the strain has faded from the other’s face. “Clay Sizemore.”

“Sizemore,” Akane repeats, the name he was reaching for falling into place in his head. “Nice to meet you. Do you want to partner up for class?”

Clay looks back up at his face, reeling back in his chair as if he doesn’t understand the question Akane is offering. “What?” He blinks hard, his eyes blank on shock. “You want to partner up with _me_?”

Akane grins. “Yeah.” He doesn’t explain that he already knows the names of all the other students in the class, that he needed to ask for Clay’s just so he could learn it; there’s something sweet about the other boy’s shock at getting asked to partner up for the purposes of an in-class practice, something charming in the lopsided knot of his tie and the ruffled yellow of his hair, like he’s trying to match the stereotypical aesthetics of his house in his physical appearance as well as in his uniform. “It’s just for the class, right? You can drop me after that if you want, it’s okay.”

Clay flushes pink with self-consciousness. “That’s not what I meant,” he blurts. “It’s just...don’t you want to pair up with another Slytherin?”

Akane laughs. “I can get to know them later,” he declares. “We live together, after all. Isn’t it more fun to find a partner in a different house when you can?”

“Oh,” Clay says, his forehead creasing like this is a difficult question to answer. “I guess so. I hadn’t really thought about it. I don’t really have the houses straight in my head just yet.”

“Really?” Akane asks. The other students are shifting around them; Clay glances at the rest of the room and moves to get to his feet with such haste that he nearly trips over his own shoes. Akane steps back to give him more space. “Are you the first wizard in your family?”  
“I--” Clay starts, but then Professor Mjolnir is clapping again to get their attention, clearing her throat as the conversations die to silence.

“Alright!” She lifts her wand overhead, holds it there until everyone is watching. “This should be a fairly easy warm-up exercise for you all. You’ll be firing beams of light at each other; use the spell _Lumincyl_ ” as she twists her wrist to send a line of light towards the ceiling. “It’s just a wrist twist, and they won’t do any harm no matter how they hit; do a few test runs and then face off. No wrestling or physical attacks. Take ten minutes and see how it feels.”

“Oh shit,” Clay says under his breath as the professor falls silent and steps back behind her desk. “Just like that, no other instruction?”

“It’ll be fine,” Akane tells him. “Here, let me try.” He angles his wand down at the floor, just shy of Clay’s feet; the twist of the wrist is a little odd, the motion jarring strangely up his arm, but he tries it once, then again, and by the third attempt it’s starting to feel more natural. “ _Lumincyl_.” There’s a sputter of light, a flicker of illumination before it fails; Clay hisses in a breath and takes a step away from the angle of Akane’s wand. Akane frowns, tries the twist once more. “ _Lumincyl_.” Light spills from the end of his wand, marking a razor-straight line from the end all the way to the floor; it shines for a moment, clear and bright against the surroundings, and then flickers out as immediately as the light from a snuffed candle.

“Wow,” Clay breathes. He’s right by Akane’s shoulder; Akane didn’t see him step in closer. “That was amazing, you got that so fast.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s that hard,” Akane demurs. “You try.”

Clay goes white, all the blood draining from his face as he takes a step back. “Oh, no, I can’t, I couldn’t, I don’t--”

“You can,” Akane says. “Just try it once, it’ll be fine.”

Clay fidgets, crossing one arm across himself so he can hold onto his other wrist. “I’ve...I’ve never done magic before.”

Akane huffs a laugh. “Of course you have.” He takes a half-step closer, reaches out to rest a steadying hand at Clay’s shoulder. “You must have done all kinds of crazy stuff as a kid.”

Clay’s forehead creases. “Sure, but it wasn’t. I mean. This is on _purpose_ , this is different.”

“That just means you know what it will do,” Akane tells him. “You have your wand, don’t you?” Clay’s hand reaches instinctively for his pocket. Akane smiles. “Just try it. All you’re doing is holding your wand and saying a word, it’ll be easy.”

Clay frowns, his shoulders hunching in on himself. “But. I don’t...what if I can’t do it?”

“It took me a couple tries,” Akane points out, but he looks up anyway to eye the rest of the class, to see the first-years attempting or succeeding at the spell, to watch the professor looking over the room with her hands clasped in front of her and a relieved smile tugging at her mouth. He tightens his hold at Clay’s shoulder, leans in close for a moment to say, “Stay here” before he shifts around the other boy as casually as he can. It’s an easy movement, looking more idle than studied, but it puts Akane precisely between the professor’s line of sight and the shaky grip Clay has on his wand.

“There.” Akane draws his hand away and flashes a smile at Clay. “No one’s watching now except for me. I can close my eyes, too, if you want.”

Clay huffs a laugh. “That’s okay.” He tightens his fingers against the handle of his wand, looks down at his hand. “Thanks.”

“It’s no problem,” Akane tells him. “Try it, I bet you do it first try.”

“Oh god,” Clay says, “I’m definitely going to screw it up now” but he’s shifting his feet anyway, angling his shoulders into the line that speaks to determination even before his expression sets into focus. The tremor in his wrist eases, then fades away completely; when Akane looks back up to his face Clay’s gaze is steady, his mouth relaxed out of the stress that was there a moment before. When he lifts his hand his fingers slide into place against the wand handle, his wrist angles smoothly as he takes a breath; it looks polished, practiced, like he’s spent years rehearsing this exact move. Then “ _Lumincyl!_ ” he says, his voice clear on the syllables, and a perfect beam of light emerges from his wand, cutting a bar of illumination across the remaining distance of the classroom to shine at the wall. It hangs there for a moment, a bright line in the air; then Clay sucks in a startled breath, and drops the angle of his wand, and the light disappears like it was never there.

“Holy shit,” Akane says succinctly. “You’re a _Muggleborn_ with talent like that?”

“What?” Clay says, a little bit breathlessly. When Akane looks back at him his eyes are wide, the blue of his stare clear and unsuspicious. “It wasn’t that good, you did it on your second try.”

“I’ve been trained in dueling since I was five,” Akane informs him. “I _should_ be able to do it on my second attempt. Was that _really_ the first time you tried that spell?”

Clay’s forehead is creasing, his shoulders tipping back like he’s flinching away from Akane’s intensity. “Yes?”

Akane looks back at the distance across the classroom to the wall, to the afterimage of the perfect circle he can still see in memory as clear as if it were stamped against the smooth wood.

“Well then,” he says, in as calm a tone as he can muster. “You must be a natural duelist, then.”

Clay is staring at Akane when he looks back at him. His hair is tousled around his face, his tie is still crooked at his collar; his eyes are wide, and soft, and the blue-green of the ocean on a clear day, like he’s managed to catch the sea in his gaze. He still looks tense, a little nervous like he’s afraid of whatever new information Akane is going to drop on him, but when Akane flashes a grin at him he smiles back, his whole expression falling soft as his eyes go warm with relief.

Akane wonders briefly what his parents would say if they knew his first new friend is a Hufflepuff, and a Muggleborn, and has eyes soaked in the blue-green color of the sea. But his parents aren’t here, and Clay is, and when he smiles wider he can feel the freedom of that run all through him like he’s filling up with the light from Clay’s spell.


	2. Personal

Clay likes Charms class best.

It’s not because it’s his best subject. In actual fact he seems to have an unexplored knack for dueling, he discovers after his first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, but the idea of facing off against someone and firing spells at them with the intent to win is more than he can handle, the worse if he thinks about the fact that his opponent is trying to fire at _him_ too. He’s absolutely dreadful at History of Magic, even with the advantage the professor gives them when he summons up a running image that acts out the descriptions he’s giving like a movie in miniature. Clay likes the movie, but the professor’s faintly sardonic tone is almost as distracting as the lines of stitches he has running across his face and the screw that seems to run right through his head, and by the time Clay leaves class he’s sure he’ll have forgotten everything he learned before the next lesson. But Charms is fun, simple spells that so far they haven’t had to aim at each other, the kind of magic Clay used to picture when he was a child and thought witches and wizards were just a bedtime story, and besides, it’s the only class the Hufflepuffs share with the Slytherins other than DADA.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” Clay confides to Akane, leaning in over the textbook Akane remembered to bring and Clay didn’t and that they’re sharing over the midline of their desks. “It says I’m supposed to flick my pinky out, but how am I supposed to do that without dropping my wand?”

“Let me see.” Akane looks over Clay’s shoulder for a moment, glancing at the text on the page and leaning away so rapidly Clay can hardly believe he’s had time to read any of it. “It should be easy, like this.” And he demonstrates, flicking his wand through the air in a movement that looks nearly identical to the action Clay saw their teacher show them at the beginning of class.

Clay frowns. “It looks easy when you do it,” he says, fixing his attention on his wand. “But when I try--” and he does, making it halfway through the motion before pausing to awkwardly angle his finger out. His wand wobbles, the end of it dipping down and out of alignment; it’s only Clay closing his hand back into a fist on the handle that keeps it from falling to the desk entirely. “I can’t keep ahold of it.”

“You must be holding it wrong,” Akane says. “You’re making a fist on the handle, how can you cast anything like that?”

“It’s worked fine all week,” Clay protests, but it’s a weak defense, there’s uncertainty creeping into his voice as he speaks. Sometimes he feels like he’ll never be comfortable again, that all his life from now on he’ll be doomed to feel a half-step off-balance from everyone around him. “Do you really think it’s that?”

“Hey there boys,” a voice comes from in front of them, and both Akane and Clay look up at once to see Professor Albarn gazing down at them. “Having some trouble?”

“Sir,” Clay manages, feeling his chest constrict with the weird panic he always feels when talking to someone in a position of authority. “N-no, I’m sure we’ll--”

“He’s having trouble with the wand motion,” Akane cuts in, his voice smooth and level and sounding as professional as if he’s speaking to a peer instead of to the instructor of their class. Clay looks sideways, torn between feeling impressed and horrified at the audacity, but Akane is looking up to the professor, his gaze clear and unruffled. “Is there a modification for the hand gesture at the end?”

“Hm,” the professor says. “Show me how you’re doing it now.”

Clay can feel himself coloring dark all over his face. He looks down at the desk and closes his fingers around his wand, but he can’t get his grip to steady, and he can feel discomfort slotting in hard against the line of his shoulders. He’s not sure he can make the attempt now even without the hand gesture, thinks he might just drop his wand completely if he tries to lift it.

“I’ve been doing it like this,” Akane says from beside him, and both Clay and the professor look as Akane raises his wand to swing it through the same elegant motion he demonstrated the first time.

The professor shakes his head. “You’re putting too much flourish on it,” he says. “May I?” Akane relinquishes his wand and the professor sets his fingers against the handle and shakes his wrist out. “It doesn’t need to be as flashy as that.” He swings the wand through the spell’s arc, the shape he cuts in the air far cleaner than the one he demonstrated at the beginning of class; it’s only at the very end that his pinky slides down, and even then only by a half-inch, so quickly Clay almost doesn’t see it. The professor pauses, his motion stilling just shy of casting the spell; then he coughs a laugh and falls out of form to consider the wand.

“Though this might want the extra,” he allows. “The cherrywood wouldn’t give it that feel. What kind of a core is in this?”

“Veela hair,” Akane says. “My family has a wandmaker in their employ who makes our wands for the family individually.”

The professor’s eyebrows go up. “Impressive,” he says, and offers Akane’s wand back to him before turning to Clay. “Let’s see you try.”

Clay moves through his attempt at the motion, his nerves and attention both scattered by Akane’s casual declaration. Akane’s wand doesn’t look particularly different than those of their classmates, but Clay can remember the walls and walls of boxes in the wandmaker’s shop when he went to buy his, can remember the nearly half-hour wait while a dozen people in line before him bought their wands. How wealthy must Akane’s family _be_ , to have someone working for just them?

“Ah.” The professor’s voice brings Clay jolting back to reality just in time to lose his grip and drop his wand clattering to the desk. Clay goes crimson, heat burning all across his cheekbones, but the professor just smiles and reaches for his dropped wand. “I see the problem. Your wand is ash, isn’t it?”

Clay swallows, tries to find his voice against the embarrassed rush of his pulse. “Uh. Y-yes. Yes sir. Ash and unicorn tail.”

“That would explain it.” The professor sweeps the wand through the air again, even more quickly than he did with Akane’s; there’s no motion in his pinky at all that Clay can see. “Your wand isn’t going to want to take modifications to the movements. Try dropping the addition and just focusing on the angle you make with the wand as you move it.”

“What?” Clay reaches out without thinking to take the handle of his wand as the professor offers it back to him. “But. The way it says to do it in the book is--”

The professor waves a hand through the air. “Wands are different,” he says, as if this is anything like useful information that Clay knows how to process. “Veela hair is going to like the extra flourishes a lot more than the ash will. Just try a few different things until you find what feels best.”

“Yes sir,” Clay says automatically, and the professor turns to move away from them. It’s not until he’s an aisle over that Clay turns to Akane to whimper, “I have _no_ idea what he’s talking about.”

Akane laughs. “Neither do I,” he says in a conspiratorial tone. “I guess we can just try whatever we want until something works.”

“But what if we do something wrong?” Clay wants to know. He looks at Akane’s hold on his wand, at the delicate angle of his fingers so different his own white-knuckled grip, and his previous question resurfaces and spills off his tongue before he can think. “Does your family really have their own wandmaker?”

Akane’s whole face goes blank. Clay hadn’t noticed the constant warmth of the smile at the corner of Akane’s mouth or bright behind his eyes until it’s suddenly absent, until his face falls into lines of seriousness Clay’s never seen before.

“Yes,” Akane says, looking down as his grip on the handle of his wand tightens. “The Hoshi family has a long and proud history to offer to its members.” The words have a strange pattern under them, like they’re being recited from memory instead of burdened with any personal feeling; Clay’s spine prickles as if ice is running along his skin.

“Oh,” Clay says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, because he isn’t sure how to parse together the weird flatness under Akane’s tone with the doll-like blankness of his face. He clears his throat, reaches up to ruffle a hand through his hair. “That sounds really rough.”

Akane’s head comes up all at once, that odd disconnect in his eyes fading as he blinks shock at Clay. “What?”

Clay shrugs awkwardly. “Your family must expect a lot from you, right?” He eases his hold on his wand, feels the warmth of the wood against his palm. “Mine would be impressed by anything I’ve done so far, and it’s only the first week.”

Akane’s mouth is tugging on a smile again. “Even this?”

“Sure,” Clay says, and tries the motion again. It feels better, this time, like his arm is in the angle it’s supposed to be. “ _Pyropigmentum!_ ” There’s a hum of heat along his arm, like electricity rushing through his veins and out his fingertips; and a splash of color in the air, a scattering of sparks that flicker bright for a moment before they vanish.

“You did it,” Akane says, his voice dipping back into pleased warmth instead of the rigid cool it was for a moment. “Let me try.” He shakes his wrist, raises his wand; his index finger is braced along the handle, the whole line of his fingertip down to his elbow one unbroken curve. “ _Pyropigmentum_.” His wand cuts through the air, his pinky flicks in counterpoint, and there’s a burst of sparks, a rainbow of tiny explosions that catch and hang suspended in the air over them for a span of seconds. Akane looks up at them, his smile spreading wider across his mouth, and when Clay looks at the other boy, he can see stars in Akane’s eyes.


	3. Balance

Akane spends his fifth weekend at Hogwarts in remedial classes.

They’re not for him. He’s doing perfectly well in all his courses; years of private tutoring through his childhood have more than compensated for any inherent weaknesses he might have originally had. While he may not be demonstrating skill in any particular field his spellwork is acceptable, his preliminary test scores perfectly typical; he’s succeeding if not excelling, offering precisely the unremarkable skill the Hoshi family expects of its members.

It’s Clay who is the interesting one. Akane’s own efforts are typical, average, so carefully calibrated to normalcy that he finds them boring even to consider; Clay is precisely the opposite, appalling in History of Magic and struggling with Transfiguration but a natural when it comes to dueling and uncommonly strong when he can get his charms to work right. Half the time he can’t work out what seems to Akane to be a perfect obvious detail or a clearly crucial component, and then after hours of effort it will all come together for him in a burst of intuition like nothing Akane himself has ever experienced. Clay’s efforts are charming, his epiphanies illuminating; after a week Akane takes to meeting him in the library to study together just for the fun of watching him progress. Clay’s creased-forehead attention makes even the most boring subjects entertaining, and there’s a deep satisfaction in seeing him finally piece together the separate components of a spell and manage something better than Akane has ever produced himself. Studying together has become something of a habit, so well-established that they barely talk about their plans, until one Friday over dinner when Akane says “See you tomorrow?” and Clay’s whole face falls slack with recollection.

“ _Oh_ ,” he blurts, so loud it carries to the adjacent tables and causes a cluster of fourth-year Gryffindors to break off and glance curiosity back at them. Clay doesn’t even see them; he’s grimacing instead, his whole face twisting up into an apology Akane can see before he even says, “Sorry, Akane, I can’t.”

“It’s fine,” Akane says, because it is, it’s just studying, and because now he’s more curious than anything else. “Didn’t you want to study for Professor Stein’s test next week, though?”

“Yeah,” Clay sighs. “But I have remedial lessons tomorrow. I guess I’ll have to study on Sunday.”

Akane pauses to stare at Clay, his dinner forgotten in front of him. “Remedial lessons?” he repeats. “For what?” He doesn’t realize until Clay looks down at his food that the shock under his tone might sound like judgment, and by then Clay is flushing into embarrassment that prickles a chill of guilt all down Akane’s spine.

“Sorry,” he says, trying to backtrack himself out of his too-quick response. “I just thought you were doing well in your classes. You’re as good as I am when we’re studying.”

“It’s not those,” Clay says down towards the table. His whole face is red, it’s spreading across his cheeks to catch against the very tips of his ears. “It’s. I can’t practice it with you.”

Akane frowns. “Which class is it?”

Clay heaves a sigh, reaches up to shove a hand through his hair. “Flying.”

Akane can feel confusion clear from his thoughts like a haze lifting, like fog burning off before sunlight. “ _Oh_ ,” he says, the tension unfolding from his shoulders. “That’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Clay tells the table. “I’m the worst in my whole class, I fell off the first time we tried.”

“You’ve never done it before,” Akane reminds him. “You can’t expect to be good at flying when you don’t have any experience.”

Clay sighs. “I guess not,” he says, but he sounds radically unconvinced. “Professor Sid wants me to get some extra practice tomorrow with him.”

“That’s good,” Akane says. “You’ll get the hang of it if you just have some more time.”

“I guess,” Clay allows. He’s still hunched in over the table, still not looking up at Akane. “At least I’ll have less of an audience when I screw up.” He makes a face, grimacing at the table hard enough that Akane can see the expression contort his features even hidden in shadow as they are. “I just wish I could sort it out with you like I do everything else.”

Akane blinks across the table. Clay’s ruffling a hand through his hair, knocking it out of any alignment and into disheveled softness instead; the stress in him is printed clear in the angle of his wrist and the set of his shoulders, as if it’s some kind of curse placed on him so sloppily Akane can see all the traces of it as clearly as he can see the way to undo it.

“That’s easy, then,” Akane says, and looks back to his dinner to take another bite. “I’ll come with you tomorrow.”

Clay’s head snaps up before he’s even pulled his hand away from his hair. Akane calmly takes a bite of his dinner and waits for:

“What?” Clay sounds lost, adrift, like he’s suddenly stopped understanding language. “You can’t just come with me to my remedial flying lesson.”

“Why not?” Akane glances up from his plate to flash a smile across the table at Clay. “It’s just you and Sid, right? It’s not like I’ll get in the way.” He hesitates, considers Clay’s open-mouthed shock for a moment. “Unless you’d rather not have more people watching you.”

“Huh?” Clay says. He’s still visibly playing catch-up with the conversation; it’s not until his expression clears into understanding that he finally lets his hand fall to the table. “Oh. _Oh_. No, it’s. You’re fine, you don’t count.”

Akane can feel his eyebrow raise, can feel his mouth quirk on a smile he doesn’t try to hold back. “I don’t _count_?”

“No,” Clay says; then, his attention snapping back to Akane and his eyes going wide, “I mean in a good way!”

“I don’t matter in a _good_ way,” Akane repeats, but Clay is going incoherent with stress and Akane can’t maintain his deadpan tone. He dissolves into a laugh instead, edging up onto hysteria as Clay looks up to blink at him, and it’s not until he waves a hand to sweep away Clay’s wide-eyed panic that he can get himself back under control.

“I know what you meant,” Akane tells him. “I’ll go with you, it sounds like fun.”

“You’ll just be watching me fall off a broom,” Clay says. “I don’t think it’ll be particularly entertaining.” But he’s smiling still, his mouth curving into happiness that glows clear over his face, and Akane takes that as the agreement it is.

Clay was more right than Akane expected him to be. A half hour in Akane started keeping track of how many falls the other boy takes onto the bright green grass of the Quidditch pitch, and after an hour he hit double digits and stopped counting. Nothing’s been too serious -- Clay’s been hitting the grass from a distance of no more than a few feet, and even unusual bad luck wouldn’t allow for so much as a sprained ankle from that distance, but by the time Clay gets to his feet from his latest spill he’s bruised all across both elbows and the gold of his hair is so dark with dust it looks nearly brown.

“Maybe we should stop for today,” Professor call-me-Sid-not-Barrett suggests from the edge of the pitch. He’s been watching for the last half hour, frowning consideration as Clay wobbles through failed attempt after failed attempt; the magical tattoos patterning his dark arms have been shifting rhythmically as he watches, the gentle motion of the pattern telltale for his concentration on the matter at hand. “We can pick this up next week once you’ve had a chance to let it soak in.”

“Let _what_ soak in?” Clay asks, pushing a hand through his hair to dislodge a cloud of dust into the air as he frowns at the broom hovering knee-height alongside him. “How to fall off?” He grimaces, angling his wrist like he’s working out a knot. “I think I’m getting _worse_.”

“You’re trying too hard,” Akane offers from his perch at the edge of the Quidditch bleachers. Sid startles to look back at him, looking at shocked as if he’s forgotten Akane is there; Akane can feel himself flush with self-consciousness at the sudden attention, but Clay’s looking at him with expectation in his eyes so Akane clears his throat and picks up his volume to project his voice more clearly. “You look like you do when all your practice spells start misfiring. You’re getting way too stressed about this.”

“I can’t do it,” Clay says, but he doesn’t sound angry as much as resigned, which is a better point to start from than Akane hoped for. “I don’t have enough room to get my balance and then as soon as it moves I’m on the ground again.”

“You’re trying to sit on it like a chair,” Akane tells him. “You have to lean forward and get your feet up behind you.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Sid says, but he’s eying Akane consideringly, and his voice is significantly softer than it has been, like he’s adopting a whisper for the resonant rumble of his voice. “Your form is too up-and-down.”

“Here.” Akane gets to his feet and hops down from the edge of the bleacher; Clay steps to the side as he approaches, making space for Akane to reach out for the handle of the broom. “Like this.” The motion of swinging himself onto and over the broomstick is easy, a tangle of coordination Akane learned to manage since before he can remember, and he can feel the broom dip under his weight, like it’s adjusting itself to his balance.

“Right,” Sid says from the sidelines, and he’s moving forward, approaching so Akane is bracketed on either side by the other two. “See how he’s leaned forward? And if he sits up--” Akane moves obediently, unhooking his feet from the supports so he can lean up and away from the broom handle. The broom wobbles, shaking uncertainly under him, and Akane’s not even halfway to upright when it jerks down as if to throw him off. His balance goes, his shoulders tilting forward reflexively as he tries to save himself, and Sid grabs at the handle to brace him while Akane gets his hands and feet back where they belong so he can slide sideways and off.

“He goes over immediately.” Sid’s still holding the broom as Akane moves back; he holds it out towards Clay while the other is still blinking through the blank stare that Akane recognizes from previous studying sessions, the shocked-clear expression that usually presages some unexpected insight.

“It’s like you startled it,” Clay says, and reaches out to take the broom with no trace of the skittish nervousness around authority that he was showing towards Sid when they started. “Like it’s an animal.”

“Sure,” Akane says, before Sid’s creased forehead can turn into a too-technical explanation of the charms on the broomstick and that even the complex ones woven into the wood don’t grant it sentience. “You can think of it that way.”

“Okay,” Clay says. He braces his hand against the smooth-polished wood of the broom, lets his other ghost glancing contact along the length of it; it’s a strangely elegant motion, compared to the white-knuckled grip he offered before. “Sorry,” he says, his head dipped down to make it clear he’s speaking to the broom. It ought to be silly, a wizard apologizing to an inanimate object, but Sid doesn’t laugh and Akane doesn’t even feel the desire to. “Let me make it up to you.”

Clay’s movements are no less awkward now than they were moments ago. He still catches his toes in the end of the broom and still nearly falls sideways off the support before he gets his feet under him, but then he’s where he needs to be, if with both feet still planted firmly on the ground.

“Okay,” Clay says without looking up at either Sid or Akane. He takes a breath, lets it out all at once. “Okay.” His grip tightens, his shoulders come forward; Akane can see him wobble as he presses against the handle of the broom like he’s trying to lie on top of it. It’s not elegant, and it’s nothing like graceful, but he’s not falling off yet, and he doesn’t even when he lifts one foot up to struggle into a brace against the foot support. Akane doesn’t blink -- he doesn’t think Sid’s breathing -- and then Clay whimpers and lifts his other foot all at once as his grip against the broom goes white with panic. The broom wobbles, veers to the side as if to spin -- and then steadies, evening out its balance as Clay clings to it. There’s a heartbeat of time -- a second -- a minute -- and then Clay lifts his head, as carefully as if he might startle himself awake, and turns to meet Akane’s stare.

“I’m doing it,” he says in a stage whisper. “Akane, do you see?”

“I see,” Akane tells him. “I knew you could.”

“Try to--” Sid starts, and Clay startles, looking up over the end of the broom with more speed and less coordination than he should. Akane flinches, Sid throws a hand out, and Clay topples sideways off the broom and hits the pitch in a puff of dust. The broom stays in mid-air for a moment, gently spinning itself back to upright, and then it floats to the ground as well with as much careful grace as if it’s deliberately commenting on Clay’s sloppy form.

“Well,” Sid says into the quiet that falls. “Let’s stop there for the day.”

Clay pushes to sit up from the pitch. His hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat, his shirt stained from the grass crushed under him in his falls; he looks exhausted, bruised and dusty and a little bit dazed when he looks back up to see Akane watching him. Akane waits until Clay’s vision comes into focus, until the other boy is blinking clarity at him; it’s only then that he lets his smile break all across his face and lifts a hand to offer the other boy a thumbs-up of victory.

When Clay laughs, Akane can feel secondhand success glow bright as sunshine in his veins.


	4. Shadowed

Christmas break is quieter than Clay expected it to be.

He’s been overwhelmed since he started at Hogwarts, perpetually struggling to catch up on homework over lunch or practicing the newest spell he learned in Transfiguration for hours until he and Akane get kicked out of the library at curfew. There’s not many students, all told, but they’re always _doing_ things, there’s constantly flickers of light and bursts of sound that catch and draw Clay’s attention away from what he should be doing. He was looking forward to break, even if Akane is going home for the holiday while Clay contents himself with a long-distance call to his parents; it’ll be nice, Clay thinks, to have the castle be quiet for once. And it _is_ quiet, if in an eerie, empty way that leaves the back of Clay’s neck prickling discomfort; there’s only a handful of students who stay over the holidays, so few that the professors that make up the more permanent residents outnumber the students who stay nearly two to one. There’s only one other Hufflepuff staying, a second-year year named Hiro Clay has spoken to before but doesn’t know well, plus a first-year Gryffindor girl with long dark hair and a blond Ravenclaw third-year who seems to spend the entirety of the break lost to the pages of a book and the faint rhythm of music Clay can hear from his perpetual headphones. There are no Slytherins at all, or at least none that join the teachers and the other students for meals in the severely depleted Great Hall for meals; the tables are so empty that by the third day of break some of the friendlier professors take to sitting at the circular tables with the students and making small talk Clay finds more terrifying even than being watched in a line from the head table. Professor Mjolnir is his favorite, he decides after the first week; she likes to talk about her time in Hufflepuff House more than stage interrogations on the subject matter for her class, and she’s so willing to fill the quiet herself that Clay doesn’t even feel awkward about his complete lack of contribution to the conversation. One day Sid even comes in to join the rest of the group over dinner and spends the entire meal talking to Nurse Nygus about Quidditch matches in a loud enough voice for Clay to hear without ever distracting him with the push of a direct question. It’s an interesting experience, Clay decides, but after the lunch he spends steadily losing his appetite while Professor Stein details some of the more gruesome battles over the past century with apparent glee, he’s more than ready for the rest of the students to return.

The return is a slow thing, a trickle more than a flood. Some of the students are staying as long at home as they can, while others want to settle themselves into routine before resuming classes on Monday. Clay wakes early on Sunday morning to the sound of drawers opening at the side of the bed next to him, and when he tugs back the corner of his curtains he’s met with a grin and a wave from the familiar form of his roommate Jaime.

“Yo,” Jaime says before looking back to the mess he’s making transferring his clothes from his luggage to his dresser. “Sorry to wake you, I just got back.”

“It’s fine,” Clay says, managing to get most of the words out before he catches himself in a jaw-cracking yawn to make him a liar. “Is everyone else back too?”

“Dunno.” Jaime frowns down at his bag, finally picking it up entirely and dumping it out over the neat lines of his bedspread. “There’s a bunch of people in the halls, though, so some people are back now.”

“Oh,” Clay says, and feels himself starting to go warm with anticipation. “Cool. That’s great.” He clears his throat and pushes a hand through his hair as he swings his legs over the edge of his bed. “I think I’m going to go get some breakfast. Do you want to come?”

“Nah,” Jaime says, waving a hand without turning around. “Gotta unpack first. I’ll get some toast later.”

“Alright,” and Clay’s pushing his feet into slippers to pad down the stairs to the common room and out into the hallway.

The halls _are_ busy, or at least busier than they have been all break. There’s laughter everywhere, friends gesturing enthusiasm at each other or giggling together over holiday stories. Most of the students aren’t in uniform yet, but Clay’s attention keeps pulling sideways at every glimpse of green and every shine of light off dark hair. Everyone he sees is older, though, fifth- and sixth-years self-confident enough to catch up in the hallways instead of in more private spaces, and by the time he makes it to the Great Hall he hasn’t seen any sign of Akane.

Akane’s not in the Hall either. Clay looks over all the occupied tables -- only a handful are busy, even with the clusters of students in the halls -- and has to admit that Akane must not be back yet, or must be unpacking still. It seems silly, when he thinks about it rationally; just because Clay’s roommate is back doesn’t mean Akane is, and even Jaime isn’t down for breakfast yet. Akane might not come back until late tonight, or even early the next morning; Clay frowns into his tea, and eats his toast slow, and tries his best to convince himself that an extra day alone isn’t a big deal and that he’s not lonely in a room full of laughter and cheer.

Clay retreats back to his room as soon as he’s done with breakfast. He spends his morning attempting to study -- he has more than enough review to do that he never quite got to over break -- before giving up halfway through and leaving all his books open so he can go outside and take one of the practice brooms from the Quidditch shed to hover a few inches above the ground while he flies in slow circles. He hasn’t flown all break -- it’s too cold to be very comfortable, and without the necessity of remedial lessons Clay isn’t fond of spending time toppling off his still-precarious perch -- but the pitch is deserted, which is at least better than the weight of noise that fills the hallways of the castle. By the time Clay gives in to the chill in his hands and the hunger in his stomach, it’s a half-hour into lunchtime and he’s completely braced himself to spend it alone.

Akane’s sitting at one of the tables when Clay comes into the Great Hall. Clay sees him from the doorway, his attention drawn to the black of Akane’s uniform and the tidy lines of his green necktie as immediately as if Akane had been waving. He’s not waving -- in fact he’s looking down at the table and hasn’t seen Clay at all -- but Clay’s still grinning as he beelines towards the other, the chill of the wind outside completely forgotten for the happiness in his chest.

“Akane!” he says as he approaches, while Akane is still looking down and not up to him. “Welcome back!”

Akane’s head snaps up in a rush, his eyes going so wide and startled Clay stalls his forward movement into a stumble and inverts his welcome into a half-formed apology for the surprise. Akane looks shocked, almost frightened, like he doesn’t recognize the person talking to him; but then he blinks, and his shoulders ease into relaxation so immediately Clay almost thinks he imagined the other’s reaction.

“Clay,” Akane says, and then he smiles and shifts sideways on the bench to make space. “Happy new year.”

“Yeah,” Clay agrees, taking the offered seat while uncomfortable self-consciousness is still prickling through him. Akane’s smile looks normal, his voice sounds perfectly even, but there’s something not-quite-right in his expression, some shadow behind his eyes that Clay can’t quite make out before Akane ducks his head and the fall of his hair hides his expression. “Did. Did you have a good Christmas?”

“Oh.” Akane’s smile flashes wider for a moment but he doesn’t look up from the table. “Yeah, it was good.”

“I’m glad,” Clay says, still without looking away from the shadow of Akane’s hair. He can feel his forehead creasing, can feel uncomfortable uncertainty settling into the line of his shoulders like a weight coming down onto him. “It was kind of boring here.”

“Was it?” Akane reaches across the table for the honey, keeping his head bowed over the pot as he drizzles a spoonful into his tea. “I’m sorry, it must have been hard to spend Christmas away from your family.”

Clay shrugs. His discomfort has spread all down his spine, now, he can feel it making his every motion awkward and clumsy. “It was alright.” Akane reaches out to put the honey back and Clay’s mouth acts on its own, blurting words before he can think: “Are you okay?”

“What?” Akane looks up in a rush, his hair falling back as his chin comes up. For a moment he’s just staring at Clay, his eyes wide and blue and still _odd_ , still tense at the corners with something Clay can’t make sense of. But then Akane’s gaze slides away from Clay’s eyes, up to the crease in his forehead and down to the frown at his mouth, and when he huffs a laugh the curve of his mouth is so natural Clay’s breathing unknots itself, the stress creeping up his spine easing back and away from his awareness.

“Yeah,” Akane says, and lifts a hand to push his hair back from his face. This time when he smiles his eyes go soft with it, his whole face relaxing into happiness, and Clay breathes a sigh of relief as some worry he hadn’t put words to undoes itself. “Yeah, I’m alright. Thanks, Clay.”

“Okay,” Clay says, and he’s smiling now too, pleased relief writing itself so clear across his expression he doesn’t even try to hold it back. “I’m glad you’re back. Things were really quiet without you around.”

Akane’s laugh is bright enough in the Hall that a few students at neighboring tables glance back at them, but Clay doesn’t look up to see; he’s too busy watching Akane smile as he stirs the honey into his tea and lifts the cup to his mouth for a sip.

“Thanks,” he says, and then, looking up to meet Clay’s gaze: “I missed you too.”

Whatever shadows were behind his eyes before, they’re gone now. By the time they’re leaving the Great Hall together, Clay has forgotten they were there at all.


	5. Preference

“Rook advance,” Akane says, leaning back from the hunch he’s been sustaining over the dormitory table. “Check.”

“Shit,” Clay mumbles from the other of the open chessboard. He has a hand in his hair, his fingers dragging over the strands with the same idle concern he’s been displaying since five minutes into the game, when the initial structure of the board dissolved into the apparent chaos of the opening moves. “King--” but the piece is moving on its own, backing away and out of the threatened space with a taunting wave of his sword somewhat undermined by the haste of his retreat. “Wait, I--”

“You had to move there,” Akane tells him, reaching over the board to gesture at the only other option. “This would have put you into checkmate.”

Clay frowns at the board. “No it wouldn’t,” he protests. “Your rook is still here and your queen’s behind my knight. There’s no--” and then he looks up, and sees the bishop at the back corner of the board where Akane is pointing.

“Damn,” Clay sighs, and topples back into his chair. “Can I recover from this?”

Akane glances at the board; only a moment, because he knows where the pieces are, and he knows the answer without needing to look. “No. Sorry.”

Clay heaves a sigh. “‘S fine.” Akane reaches out to nudge his queen forward and then leans back in his own chair to let the last pre-determined moves of the game play out. Clay cringes at the clatter of combat in miniature, looks away for the last attack of Akane’s queen on his king, and Akane watches Clay instead of the board; he’s always been more interested in observing his opponent than in watching the pieces act out a stylized representation of war on the chessboard.

“I didn’t really think I was gonna win anyway,” Clay says, flashing a grin at Akane. “It would be a first if I did.”

“You’re getting better,” Akane tells him. “That move you did with the knight and the pawn in the middle was genius.”

“Sure,” Clay says, sounding skeptical but smiling sincerely enough that Akane isn’t overly worried about the blow to his ego losing might bring. “Says the chess prodigy. Is chess ability some kind of pureblood Slytherin thing?”

Akane huffs a laugh and sits up to collect his carrying box and open it so his pieces can pick themselves up off the board and realign themselves into neat rows inside. “Of course,” he says, bracing the lid open against a textbook so he can leave the pieces to set their own pace about reorienting themselves in the space. “Nightly games of wizard chess are part of the Slytherin House hazing process. Any first year who loses has to sleep on the common room floor and not in our dormitory.”

“Oh my god,” Clay breathes. “Really?”

Akane’s mouth twitches. “ _No_ ,” he says, and then he’s grinning too wide to hold back. “You really are gullible, you know.”

“Oh man,” Clay sighs, tipping his head back against the support of his chair as his cheeks darken to the sound of Akane laughing. “I actually believed you for a minute.”

“You’d believe anything,” Akane tells him. “You’ve _been_ to our common room, you know it’s not that different from here.”

“I don’t know what happens when I’m not there!” Clay protests, sitting up to lean over the table while Akane grins at him from the other side. “And Slytherins are supposed to be good at chess, anyway.”

“Most of us are,” Akane allows. “It’s about learning to out-strategize your opponent, and wizard chess is easy to practice with.” His pieces have shuffled themselves into place in the box; Akane reaches for his wand, waves it over Clay’s side of the board, and the pieces get up from the melodramatic death poses they’ve adopted, poking at torn uniforms and frowning at tiny bloodstains as they move towards their places with somewhat less cheer than the victorious black side. Clay braces his elbow at the table, his gaze tracking the movement of the pieces with more focus than he showed to the combat; when one knight turns back for a dropped sword on the other side of the board Clay picks it up and offers it to him, even turning it around to give it hilt-first after a moment of hesitation.

“Is this one of those pureblood things again?” Clay asks as the last of the pieces settle into place and adjust themselves into their usual dormant positions. Akane looks up and across the table, and Clay lifts his head to blink at him instead of at the pieces. “Like the flying and the grades?”

Akane blinks. “You mean my family’s expectations for me.”

Clay’s mouth twists on a frown, his gaze dropping down to the table. “Yeah.” There’s a pause, and then, in a rush: “Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No,” Akane says, because his spine is prickling cold with the thought of the the mansion that calls itself his home but there’s a weird pressure in his chest too, the warmth of affectionate appreciation enough to override the discomfort that comes with the thought of his family name. He looks down at the chess pieces lined up in neat rows inside their box; one of the queens even has her eyes shut and has slumped sideways to drowse against her king’s shoulder. It makes Akane smile before he braces the lid of the box against his thumb and eases it shut quietly so as not to disturb her.

“No,” he says again, once the box is shut and the latch clicked into place. “Mostly it’s academics I need to focus on.” He pauses, feeling his mouth catch on a smile cold enough that it doesn’t make it to his eyes. “And the Sorting, of course. Has to be Slytherin, to demonstrate that our ambition is sufficient to make us legitimate heirs.” He picks the box up from the edge of the table, leans down to fit it back into the bottom of his carrying bag, carefully so he can occupy his attention with what his hands are doing instead of the deliberately distant sound of his voice. “I’ll have to think about Quidditch later, or maybe a part-time apprenticeship with one of the professors. As a first-year most of it is about creating a solid foundation for the next six years.” He straightens to look back over the table; Clay is still watching him from the other side, his eyes wide and mouth soft on what is obviously sympathy. He blinks after a moment, dropping his gaze as his cheeks color with embarrassment, but Akane’s chest goes warm with appreciation more than with injured pride, and when he smiles it’s an easy expression at his lips.

“But no,” he finishes. “To answer your question.” Clay lifts his head, blinking confusion across the table, and Akane meets his gaze and lets himself smile, slow and carefully so it has time to warm and spread across his face. “I just really like wizard chess.”

Clay’s mouth quirks into a startled smile. “You? Just Akane?”

“Just Akane,” Akane agrees. “The scion of the house of Hoshi has other things to dedicate his time to but Akane likes wizard chess.”

Clay’s forehead creases, his smile going soft and a little bit shaky; but then he looks down at the empty board, the squares cleared of their burden of pieces, and his expression smoothes out, the happiness at his mouth steadying and solidifying.

“Cool,” he says. “I think I do too.”

“I’m surprised,” Akane says with as much lightness in his tone as he can muster. “You like losing that much?”

“I’m getting better,” Clay insists, looking up to meet the grin Akane isn’t even trying to keep off his face. “You said I was yourself.”

“You are,” Akane agrees. “I’m still miles above you.”

“I’ll catch up,” Clay says. “I’ll catch up and then I’ll beat you every time.”

Akane can feel his smile go wider, can feel it catch warm at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, putting as much skepticism on the word as he can find. “You do that.” But then Clay huffs a frown at him, and Akane can’t keep from laughing, and then Clay starts to smile too and they’re both laughing over the empty board, smiling like Akane can never remember smiling over chess back at home.

He likes it better this way.


	6. Weightless

It’s strange to have nothing to study for.

Clay can feel the absence of stress like an echo of itself, like the pressure of the finals they’ve just come out of has lifted to leave his shoulders still aching with the memory of the anxiety he’s been carrying for the last few weeks. It’s been days of existing hour-to-hour, thinking only about the next exam and no farther lest he give up in exhaustion; Clay feels vaguely like he stopped existing for the span of the month leading up to finals, as if the wall of tests coming for him marked the end of his life as he knew it. It’s an odd feeling to find himself still alive on the other side, odder still to let himself relax without the nagging feeling of something left undone; it’s almost uncomfortable, like an itch between his shoulders that he can’t quite shake, even knowing the tests are behind him for good or bad.

Akane is no better. If anything he looks worse than he did this morning over breakfast in a room dominated more by the sound of pages turning and quills scratching out last-minute notes than by the more usual sound of chatter and conversation. Then he was bright, his whole expression glowing with energy so overflowing as to seem nearly manic, until even Clay felt buoyed up by the time they departed to their respective tests in History of Magic and Potions. Clay had fallen into the rhythm of his potions work, losing the painful edge of his nerves in the pattern of his movements, and by the time the chime signalling the end of the test period had sounded he had felt as empty as his cleaned-out cauldron, like all the nerves and stress in him were scooped out entirely to leave him with a body as hollow as his mind feels. Clay made his way down the corridors from the potions classroom somewhat laboriously, getting lost three times on his way and not noticing one of them, until by the time he emerged into the late-spring sunshine he was as startled as if the grassy field hadn’t been his end goal all along. There had been a trickle of students meandering across the green, the motion of a few Quidditch players having an impromptu game out on the pitch, and the familiar shine of blue-black hair at the edge of the Great Lake, where Clay knew Akane would be. It had made him smile, had sped his steps into the closest thing to excitement he could manage with the mental hollowness of his thoughts; but Akane hadn’t looked up until Clay was almost on top of him, had barely smiled even then, and when Clay dropped to sit alongside the other boy he had stayed quiet as Akane almost never is, even when Clay asked tentatively if his exam had gone poorly.

Akane hadn’t even looked at him. “No,” he said, “No, it was fine. Professor Stein gave us a study sheet to work from last week and everything he tested us on was included.”

“Oh,” Clay had said, at a loss for what to continue with, and then Akane had turned his head and offered a smile, and Clay was smiling back in a relief even before Akane said “Here,” and offered Clay a stack of toast. “For the Squid.”

It turns out feeding the squid is an extended process, or at least it is for Akane. Clay’s seen other students fling squares of bread out onto the surface of the lake like projectiles, spinning them along their edge so they catch the wind and land halfway to the center of the water. But Akane has Clay tear the bread into squares to fit against his palm, and then angles his wand over the smaller pieces to levitate them out as far over the water as he can get before the spell gets too weak and the piece wobbles and falls to the surface to be caught by a flailing tentacle. It’s something of a process, taking nearly five minutes for each piece, and Clay is just tearing up the second slice of toast into smaller chunks when Akane finally takes a breath to speak.

“Did your test go well?” he asks, looking away from the hovering square of bread to meet Clay’s gaze. “Sorry, I should have asked sooner.”

“Oh,” Clay says. “No, it’s fine,” with a shake of his head to punctuate. “I don’t know? I felt okay I guess. I wasn’t really thinking at all, during it.”

“That’s probably good,” Akane tells him. “Either that or you brewed completely the wrong potion and didn’t catch yourself.” His mouth quirks as a cold chill of horror slides down Clay’s spine; the expression is bright enough to touch his eyes, warm enough that it sticks into a cough in his throat before he looks up and away. “I’m joking.”

“But I might have actually done that,” Clay breathes, suddenly unsure. He can remember going through the steps he’s memorized, can remember the feel of the knife under his hand and the steam on his face, but try as he might he can’t hold to the recollection of the actual test sheet in his mind, can’t actually be sure what he was supposed to brew during the period. “Oh no, what if I screwed it up?”

“You’ll be okay,” Akane soothes. “I’m sure you did fine.” The bread hovering over the lake trembles; they both look up at the square of toast, their attention caught by the motion. Akane frowns, and tightens his grip on his wand, and the piece steadies and continues out farther over the water. “Besides, it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it now.”

“That’s not very comforting,” Clay sighs. The bread shifts again, catching on its edge like it’s sticking in a wind, and then drops through the air towards the surface of the lake. It lands against the water, catching ripples around it for a moment; and then there’s a pale shape under the dark surface, the suggestion of movement from the depths, and the sweeping grab of a tentacle to latch onto the food and drag it down.

“You’ll pass,” Akane says. “I’m too good at Potions for you to fail with me as a tutor.”

“That’s kind of narcissistic of you to say,” Clay tells him.

“It’s still true.” Akane leans back over the grass and rolls onto his side towards Clay; when he reaches out to touch his wand to the next piece of toast the wood brushes Clay’s hand, the contact tickling against his skin like electricity. “And you weren’t going to say it.”

“You don’t need my help talking yourself up,” Clay says. Akane smiles amusement without looking up, waving his wand over the toast in Clay’s palm while he shapes the words of the spell with his lips, and the piece floats up like it’s gone weightless, following the angle of Akane’s wand as he rolls over onto his back and guides it straight up in the air over them. Clay tips his head back to follow it as it shrinks against the backdrop of the blue sky.

“You don’t need to worry about Potions,” Akane says, and Clay looks over at him again to see the focus in Akane’s blue eyes as he watches the toast rise higher into the sky. “You’ll still be back in the fall. Even if you have to take remedial classes I’ll help you with them.”

“You’ll be back too,” Clay says, meaning it as a statement but feeling the words catch into uncertainty in the back of his throat instead. “In the fall, I mean. Right?”

“Of course I will,” Akane says. “I’ll see you first day back.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, feeling a little of his sudden panic ease from his chest. “Good.” He takes a breath, lets it go; when he looks back up the bread is still hovering against the sky, pinned over them like Akane’s forgotten it’s there. “Can I write to you? Over the summer, I mean.”

“Mm,” Akane hums, and tips his wand towards the lake, letting the offering of food drift away from them like a particularly odd cloud. His eyes are focused on the movement of the bread, his gaze distant, but the very corner of his mouth is tight, like he’s thinking over the idea of smiling. “It’s a bit hard for postmen to find our mansion.” Clay can feel his heart sink, can feel the weight of the words like a door shutting in his face; but then Akane goes on, almost without pause as he raises his wand to better steer the toast out over the surface of the dark lake. “I’ll send you my owl and he can stay while you write.” Akane’s wand flicks, the bread falls; the squid lashes out with startling speed, snatching the toast from the air and holding it clear of the water for a moment as an enormous pale shape rises from the shadows and a beak opens to take the food from the air without letting it get damp. Clay takes an inhale, startled by the sheer size of the squid’s actual body, but Akane just tips his head back to look up at the sky overhead. “Can you get some owl treats for him before you go back home?”

Clay looks away from the lake and sideways, to where Akane is sprawled across the grass and gazing up at him. He’s smiling for sure, now, and his eyes are as blue and unshadowed as the springtime sky overhead.

“Yeah,” Clay says, and grins down at Akane. “I can do that.”


	7. Letters

Akane hates the summer after his first year at Hogwarts.

He didn’t think it would be so bad. He’s lived at home for all his life until this year, after all; even if the shadows of the mansion bore down on him like a physical weight over the winter holidays, he’s ready to settle back into the routine of his everyday life once he’s returned for the few months of time he has between the end of classes and his return to the castle. But the house seems darker, somehow, like the shadows carry more weight or maybe like they’re watching him, now, in a way they never seemed to before, like the house itself is seeing the secrets he’s carrying unspoken on the back of his tongue and the thoughts that uncurl in his mind every time his father reminds him of his duty to uphold the ‘noble heritage of house Hoshi.’ They’re little comments, nothing with enough weight to feel deliberately aimed either at Akane or at the steadily growing pile of letters in Clay’s sloppy handwriting he keeps hidden in his bedroom, but he spends the first month home keeping quiet, and the second nearly mute, and by the third he’s almost forgotten the sound of his own voice for how little he’s used it. It’s not that he’s frightened as much as that he’s heavy: with his parents’ expectations, with his own unhappiness, and most of all with the bright excitement that comes with Clay’s letters and feels like more of a secret every day.

Akane isn’t sure what his parents would do if they found out he was exchanging summertime letters with a classmate. At best they would be deemed a distraction from his studies over break and the friendship would be called into question as an unnecessary waste of time, and that’s only in the most general of cases. Akane is sure without needing to ask that Clay’s House affiliation would bring an end to the correspondence entirely, and that’s only if he’s lucky enough for his parents to stay ignorant of the lack of noble heritage and in fact of any wizarding heritage in Clay’s bloodline. So he doesn’t say anything, volunteers no information on the letters or on his school life either one, and if that makes him silent and brings his mother to comment occasionally on how sullen he’s becoming, at least his father is ready enough to make excuses for the trials and tribulations of being a teenager and let him leave the dinner table to practice spellcasting in the training room thankfully absent any audience but the buffering spells laid into the walls.

Akane doesn’t know if it would be better without the letters. He thinks it might be, sometimes, that maybe he could more easily step back into the life he used to live with more ease if he did away with the distraction of the letters that come on a nearly nightly basis courtesy of his much-overworked owl Ares. Akane can’t always respond right away -- sometimes it’s days before he can find the time to linger over blank parchment long enough to come up with some sufficiently innocuous story to tell in exchange for Clay’s chatty missives -- but Ares seems as happy to spend the night at Clay’s as at the Hoshi mansion, and after the first month Akane takes to sending him back to Clay with nothing more than a note saying _Long day again, sorry, tell me more_ to elicit another handful of notebook paper scribbled over with ink from a ballpoint pen instead of following the fluid lines of a quill.

Clay’s doing all kinds of things, and seems to feel the need to apologize for all of them as being boring. _Went shopping today_ , one of his early letters reads. _The city’s always busy but Mum bought me ice cream and we sat out on the street and watched people go by. You would have liked the ice cream, it was great. I’m rambling again, sorry_. Or another, shortly after Akane’s inventory letter arrived under the door of his bedroom: _Diagon Alley is crazy, it’s weird to remember that magic exists after I’ve been home all summer. I guess that doesn’t happen to you. Do you ever visit Muggle cities, like on vacation or something? I feel like it would be like a totally different world. Maybe it’s just boring. Did you even need to go shopping this year, or do you just have everything you need delivered to your mansion? (I can’t believe you live in a mansion.)_

Akane never feels like he has anything worth saying in return. Clay’s letters are a mess, covered with ink and with the soft edges of torn-out notebook pages drifting like snow to collect in the corners of Akane’s room for the house elves to find and wonder over; Akane’s are neat, pristine ink-on-parchment with the heavy physical weight of both to counterbalance the fact that his carry far less information than Clay’s rambling notes do. But it’s enough, apparently, to keep Clay’s letters coming, and with ever greater frequency, until by the week before school starts again he takes to adding postscripts: _Send Ares back if you’re busy, I’ll write something before dinner tonight_ and Akane stays up late waiting for the last letter before he goes to bed. The night before term starts he writes a note of his own, the words coming more easily than they have all summer in expectation of the last line: _See you at dinner tomorrow_ , written so fast the drilled-in tidiness of his cursive veers into sharp points over the trailing letters. Akane signs his name as rapidly, rolls the letter into a curl for Ares to take back, and then settles in his window seat to watch the stars spread across the sky as the evening descends into night. He falls asleep against the support at his back, drowsing through some hours of the night; when he wakes it’s to Ares preening his hair, the weight of the owl’s claws settling into his shoulder with the promise of a reply. Akane blinks himself to consciousness and tugs the note off Ares’s leg; it’s smaller than usual, a half-sheet of paper torn so hastily the edge veers up and diagonally across the faint blue of the horizontal lines.

 _Yes!!_ Clay’s handwriting all but glows from the page, like it’s been written in radiant ink instead of the plain black of a Muggle pen. _See you tomorrow!_

Akane smiles down at the note, not looking up even as he reaches to ruffle Ares into calm against his shoulder. Then he gets up, and pads across the room towards his bed, and collapses into sleep with Clay’s letter in his hand and a smile on his face.

It feels good to have something to look forward to.


	8. Reunion

Clay thinks about Akane during the entire trip to Hogwarts. He ended up in a compartment with a pair of first years, a blonde girl named Maka who was ready to talk Clay’s ear off about the book she had open in her lap for the entire trip and a boy who barely spoke until the girl left to buy food for the three of them, and then asked Clay how his summer had been with a casual calmness that put Clay immediately at ease far more than the girl’s intensity had done. By the time she had returned Clay and the boy -- Soul, is the name he gave, without any further explanation even when Clay blinked surprise at him -- were in the middle of a conversation about music, and they had all three spent the rest of the trip discussing their tastes, or rather Clay had spent it listening to the other two bicker about their different preferences. He doesn’t completely understand why they don’t just agree to disagree, but they seem to be having a good time at least, and it leaves him free to watch them interact and wonder what it would be like if Akane took the Hogwarts Express in to school instead of whatever high-class transportation his family provides for him. It must be a little bit lonely, Clay thinks, to be separated from the easy banter of the other students; it makes him think about the letters he received over the summer, about the weight that seemed to bear down on the paper like an ever-growing shadow with each passing week, like Akane was forcing himself to cheer for Clay’s sake and only half succeeding. The thought bears heavy on Clay’s thoughts as the sun sinks lower in the sky, until by the time the train draws to a stop in the last dying rays of the sunset it’s hard to straighten his shoulders and get to his feet with any speed.

“Sorry,” Soul says as they shuffle towards the door of their compartment, low so the sound of his voice carries to Clay but doesn’t get the attention of Maka dragging the weight of her luggage free from the rack. “She can be a little overwhelming when you’ve just met her, but she’s nice once you spend some time with her.”

“Oh.” Clay blinks and shakes his head to bring himself back to reality. “No, she seems nice. You both are.”

Soul huffs a laugh and reaches up to grab the handle of his bag. “Wait’ll you meet our friend Black*Star,” he says as the weight swings down and he lets it land heavy on the floor. “He’s an even bigger dork than Miss Loser here.”

“What?” Maka says, turning away from her luggage to glare at Soul. “Excuse me, Soul, did you just compare me to _Black*Star_?”

“Like it’s not deserved,” Soul says, and drags his bag out into the corridor as Maka stomps after him, spitting irritation at his shoulders with the same intensity she brought to bear on his musical taste as well. Clay is left to fumble his luggage free of the rack, smacking himself in the shoulder and nearly crushing his foot in the process, and then he joins the tail end of the students disembarking the train on their way to the main castle.

It’s chaos on the other side of the train doors. Objectively, Clay thinks there can’t be that many students in the clearing, but after a summer alone but for the occasional neighborhood visitors the sheer volume of the conversations bubbling in the space is overwhelming. There are clusters of students everywhere, trios of first years banding together from preexisting friendships or brand new ones made on the train, Clay’s not sure, and the older students are grouping up too, forming pairs and quartets in the clearing before they move towards the open doors of the carriages awaiting them. Clay blinks at the crowd, his attention skidding out on the sheer number of things to look at for a moment; and then a familiar voice at his shoulder says “Clay,” and Clay’s breathing rushes into a sigh of relief even as he turns to see Akane next to him.

“Hey,” he says, too caught by the pleasure of the interruption to think through a proper greeting. “I didn’t see you.”

“Obviously,” Akane says, but he sounds pleased, and his mouth is curving on a smile so wide Clay is grinning back without thinking, catching the delight in the expression like it’s contagious. “You look more confused than the first-years do.”

“I only just got back!” Clay protests. “The magic is all a little overwhelming, give me time to adjust.”

“It’s fine,” Akane soothes, and he sounds as sincere as he looks, with the warmth of his smile spreading all over his face. Clay had been afraid of seeing the winter-break shadows back in Akane’s face, had been worried that the months apart would leave his friend bowed down under that same weight he came back with after the first year holidays; but Akane is all but glowing, so bright with happiness Clay almost expects him to start throwing off sparks like Clay’s wand did when he first picked it up out of its box in Ollivander’s wand shop. “Come on, let’s go to the castle and you can have all of dinner to remember how to act like you’ve ever seen magic before in your life.”

“I’m not that bad!” Clay protests as Akane turns to lead the way to one of the waiting carriages. “I handled the invisible train platform just fine this time. And I’m not even freaking about about riding in horseless carriages up to the castle, I’m acting perfectly normal.”

Akane glances at him, his smile flickering for a moment. “Horseless?”

“Yeah.” Clay jerks his chin at the empty front of the carriage. “See the carriage and how there’s nothing there in the front?”

Akane doesn’t even turn. He just stares at Clay for a moment; then, with a huff of a laugh, “Right,” as he ducks his head to flick his wand at Clay’s bag and levitate them to the roof of the carriage. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“I know,” Clay agrees, watching the practiced grace of Akane’s wand movements more than the gentle rise of his luggage through the air. It’s strange how familiar it looks after three months with nothing but the diagrams in textbooks to guide him; Clay can feel a knot along his spine he didn’t know was there unwind, like he’s coming home instead of just leaving it. “We were on the train for _hours_. Was the trip that long for you too?”

“Mm,” Akane says, “more or less,” and then he’s looking back from the roof of the carriage, and his attention abruptly focuses on Clay’s shoulders. “Hey, wait a minute.”

Clay freezes. There’s enough of a snap on Akane’s words to lock him in place with unspecified guilt, to bring an apology to his lips before he understands the subject of conversation. “I’m sorry,” he blurts, and then, only as an afterthought: “What did I do?”

“You _grew_ ,” Akane says, and then, while Clay is still blinking confusion at this, he reaches out to the handle of the carriage and leaps up onto the bottommost step. It’s not until Akane is meeting Clay’s gaze levelly that Clay realized he hadn’t been before, and only when he looks down at the step that he realizes it’s a gap of inches, now, when they were nearly of a height at the beginning of the summer vacation.

“That is not fair,” Akane sighs, gazing at the top of Clay’s head with something between amusement and exasperation. “First my baby cousin beats me and now betrayal from my closest friend.”

“I’m sorry!” Clay exclaims, feeling his shoulders start to hunch under the weight of Akane’s stare. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even realize I _was_ so much taller.”

“I’m just going to have to catch you,” Akane says, with a vague distance in his eyes that says he’s not seeing Clay at all; and then he blinks, and looks at the other boy again, and frowns sudden attention. “Stop,” he says, and reaches out to smack against Clay’s curved-in shoulder. “Stop slouching, what’s the point of getting taller if you don’t let everyone see?”

“Sorry,” Clay says again, trying to straighten obediently against the self-conscious weight curving his spine down. “I’m not used to thinking about it.”

“You don’t have to,” Akane tells him, and takes another move up the carriage steps. The action brings him another span of inches higher, tilts his chin down as he holds Clay’s gaze; Clay can feel his shoulders straightening on their own, his body trying to match Akane’s height over him without any conscious effort on his part. “Just stand up straight.” Akane’s smile is bright, and sudden, and breaks all over his face so fast Clay is grinning contagious delight before he has a chance to think why. “Be proud of yourself, Clay.”

“Okay,” Clay says, even though he doesn’t think it’s quite as easy as all that. Akane leans away from the carriage and out towards him; when he offers his hand Clay takes it without thinking, reaching out to catch the angle of Akane’s fingers in his so the other can pull him up into the carriage.

He’s still smiling when the door shuts behind them.


	9. Intuitive

“I don’t think I’m going to be very good company,” Clay protests as Akane leads him across the gently sloping hill from the castle to the Quidditch pitch. “I don’t even know what the rules are.”

“I’ve told you them over and over,” Akane says, glancing back and slowing his steps to accommodate Clay’s far-less-certain pace at his heels. “Do we need to start studying Quidditch along with everything else?”

“It’s not like it’ll make a difference,” Clay says, not for the first time. “I can still barely stay on a broom, it’s not like I’ll ever need to really know the rules.”

“That’s right, the rules don’t really matter. Like I’ve been telling you,” Akane grins, pleased to have Clay make the argument for him. From the way Clay’s forehead creases and his mouth dips into a frown, he’s aware that he’s been backed into a corner, but he still jogs to catch up when Akane gestures at him to follow. “All you have to do is yell when all the rest of us do, it’s not that hard.”

“I’m not even in Slytherin,” Clay complains. “Everyone’s going to know I don’t belong.”

“Everyone knows you’re a Hufflepuff,” Akane agrees. Clay still looks a little like he’s thinking about turning tail and bolting; Akane reaches up for his shoulder, bracing his hand against the line of it just to make sure the other keeps going forward instead of fleeing. “You won’t be the only one cheering for not-your-house, all the other Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors will have picked a side to root for too. It’s more fun that way.”

“I still don’t--” Clay protests, but they’re getting too close to the stadium now for Akane to hear his words with any clarity. Even with most of the students filling the stands, there’s not more than several dozen attendees, but all of them are buzzing with adrenaline, their voices rising louder than they ever do inside the enclosed walls of the castle, and the ensuing roar is spilling well beyond the curved walls of the stadium itself. Clay tenses with nerves and Akane slides his hand from shoulder to back, spreading his fingers wide to make sure he can keep the other moving forward. He’s not sure Clay _wants_ to, exactly -- his steps go stiff and stumbling under the force -- but he keeps going, pushed along by inertia or by Akane’s urging either one to be swept forward and into the buzz of conversation filling the stands.

The sides are fairly evenly split, Akane is glad to see as he steps through the arched entrance to the benches for the audience. It offers support to his claim to Clay to have a blend of House colors on both the Slytherin and Ravenclaw sides of the stadium; there’s even a few green scarves on the far side and a smattering of blues on their semi-circle, friendships or romances too well-developed for even the perpetual competitiveness of Quidditch to overcome. It’s red he’s looking for, though, the tell of a dark scarf to contrast with white hair; and then there’s a waving arm, a shrill call of “Over here!” in a voice high enough to carry over even the rumble of sound in the stadium, and when Akane looks for the speaker Maka’s on her feet in nearly the center of a row only two or three up from the best seats on the pitch. Akane lifts a hand in acknowledgment, looks back to Clay -- head ducked, shoulders hunched against the surge of noise -- and tightens a hold on the back of the other’s robes to pull him bodily up the stairs to the row Maka and Soul have saved for them.

“These are great seats,” Akane says as they clear the end of the row and he pushes Clay ahead of him to the gap made by Soul compacting out of the seat-saving sprawl he was been sustaining when they came in the entrance. “How long have you been saving these?”

“Almost an hour,” Soul says, sounding more bored than irritated. “Maka said we had to to support Black*Star in his first game. As if he needs anything more to swell his ego.”

Maka frowns at him, lifting the book in her hands to smack against the top of his head. “Don’t be mean, Soul,” she commands while Soul is still flinching from the minimal impact. “You’re just jealous you didn’t make it onto the Gryffindor team.”

“Sure,” Soul drawls. “ _I’m_ the one who cried when I wasn’t picked as a first-year Chaser like my mom.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Maka snaps, and for a moment the conversation stalls as she attempts another attack that Soul fends off with somewhat more success than the first. Akane grins at the scuffle but Clay laughs out loud, the sound bright enough to draw Akane’s attention to the other’s face. Clay’s still hunched in over his knees with the same self-conscious slouch he’s demonstrated ever since he came back from summer vacation with a splash of freckles across his cheeks and three inches on his height, but his smile is easy, and some of the tension of his uncertainty seems to be fading with the familiarity of Soul and Maka’s mutual teasing.

“Anyway,” Maka says as Soul finally subsides, still hunching forward in mock defense against the rain of Maka’s book smacking against the top of his head. “He’s your friend too, you ought to be excited for him.”

“Sure,” Soul allows, straightening insofar as his usual casual slouch allows. “I just mean I wouldn’t mind seeing Ravenclaw trash him in his first game.”

“Who are you talking about?” Clay wants to know, but no sooner has he asked then there’s a roar of enthusiasm from the stadium, dozens of voices raised in excitement as the first members of the opposing teams step out onto the field. The Slytherins are closer to the side the four of them are on, and Black*Star’s neon-bright hair would make him easy to spot even over a much greater distance. Akane takes a breath, lifts a hand to point; and Black*Star pivots to face the stadium, bellowing a laugh that manages to ring clear even over the shouts of the audience.

“Yes, yes!” he yells, head tilted back so he’s boasting more to the sky overhead than even to the members of the audience. “It is I, the great Black*Star!”

“Him,” Soul and Maka say in perfect stereo as Akane lets his arm fall in exchange for a raised eyebrow. Clay snorts a disbelieving laugh from alongside him and Akane glances sideways in time to see the shape of amusement still clinging to the other’s mouth.

“That’s Black*Star,” Akane says, the introduction needless but enough to bring Clay’s attention back to him. “He’s...unforgettable.”

“Do you know him from your House?” Clay asks.

It’s an innocent question. Akane can’t see any trace of suspicion in Clay’s face any more than there has ever been the least hint of deception in the other’s eyes in all the time Akane has known him. But Akane’s spine stiffens of its own accord, he can feel his expression closing off, and Clay’s smile flickers, his eyes going wide with concern at Akane’s unexpected reaction.

“Not just that,” Akane says, because he can’t get away with claiming his cousin is just another member of Slytherin House even if he wanted to, not after the complete giveaway of his startled reaction to the question. He looks back out at the field, where Black*Star is exchanging a vigorous high-five with the other Slytherin beater, a blonde first-year who looks perfectly sweet until you see her on a broomstick. It’s the surprise, he thinks, that so undid his composure; it’s strange to remember, sometimes, how distant Clay is from recent magical history, that he doesn’t even know about the scandal that dragged Akane’s aunt and uncle into political disrepute and cast a shadow over the entire Hoshi name that Akane’s blandly typical behavior is precisely calculated to counteract. “He’s part of my extended family, actually.”

“What?” Clay asks, looking back out to the field. When Akane risks a glance sideways Clay’s eyes have gone wide. “He doesn’t look much like you.”

“He takes after his dad,” Akane says, still looking at the innocent surprise clear across Clay’s face. “It’s his mother that’s my aunt, biologically speaking.”

“That’s crazy,” Clay says, still gazing shock across the field at the other boy. His forehead creases for a moment, like he’s struggling with a problem; then he looks back at the other boy, and when he blinks Akane can see his expression collapse into sudden apology.

“Sorry,” Clay says, and then he looks down at his hands, his shoulders hunching even farther than they were before. “We don’t have to talk about it, I know you don’t like talking about your family.”

Akane blinks shock. “What’s that?”

“Your family,” Clay says, and he looks back up, his eyes wide and still wholly absent any trace of suspicion at all. “You don’t like talking about them, right? You always get all weird and quiet when it comes up.”

“You.” Akane closes his mouth, blinks hard again. “I didn’t know you knew that.”

“Well, yeah.” Clay shrugs awkwardly, one shoulder lifting under the smooth black of his robes. “I mean, you always get this distant look in your eyes, like you’re not really here anymore, and you don’t smile right.” He looks down at his hands, his mouth curving into a frown. “You were really quiet over the summer, too.”

“Oh,” Akane says. Clay’s hair is very bright in the sunlight; the wind catches against the curl of it, ruffling the yellow up around his face. “I didn’t know you could tell.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, still frowning at his fingers; then he shakes his head, and straightens his shoulders, and looks back up at the pitch. “Oh, the game’s about to start!”  
It’s a clumsy attempt at changing the subject, transparent and awkward enough that Akane’s laugh is more from self-consciousness than comfort. But when Clay looks at him his eyes are bright with relief, and his mouth is curving back into happiness, and by the time Akane’s pulled his laugh back under control his smile has fallen into the comfort of sincerity again without him even trying.

They don’t win the match. Black*Star and Patty do their fair share, but the Ravenclaws have a pair of second-years, Ox and Harvar, whose work as Chaser and Keeper is enough to keep the Slytherins from gaining too much of an advantage before their star Seeker Justin Law catches the Snitch while the Slytherins are still in the middle of trying to score a goal. Maka is disappointed, Soul amused, and Clay so hoarse from shouting enthusiasm that he loses his voice and has to speak in a whisper the whole way back to the castle before he can get a Cough Cordial from the head nurse. Akane escorts him, trying and mostly failing to not laugh at how Clay sounds speaking in a breathless whisper, and if he takes them on a more roundabout route to the infirmary than he needs to for the extra amusement, Clay doesn’t protest. By the time they arrive they’re both laughing, Akane in his usualtone and Clay in high, squeaking giggles, and even when Akane remembers the brief conversation before the game, it’s Clay’s unexpected intuition that he recalls more than the discomfort of the subject.


	10. Reassurance

Clay likes Potions better as a second-year.

It would be nice to claim this is due to his own improvement. After struggling himself into a mediocre grade as a new student, it would be gratifying to have come back from the summer to find an inherent Potions ability had blossomed in place of his previously clumsy attempts at the art of potionmaking their professor B.J. likes to ramble on about. But any improvement Clay has made in himself is more than matched by the increased difficulty of the work they are expected to perform during their class session, and he’s afraid that left to his own devices he would be even less competent than he managed to appear last year.

Luckily for Clay, he’s not left to his own devices.

“Are you almost done with those?” Akane wants to know without looking away from the steady rhythm his wand is making over the cauldron. The action of his wrist is lulling, if Clay watches it too long; he finds himself caught staring for a span of seconds, wasting time he is meant to be spending on the task at hand.

“Ah,” he says, and blinks, and looks back down to the newt eyes he is supposed to be quartering. “Almost.”

“Get those finished,” Akane says, his voice perfectly level with the blank distraction he always takes on when he’s doing Potions work. “I’m going to need them soon.”

Clay nods, even though Akane’s not looking to see the motion. “Got it,” he says, and ducks his head to focus on what he’s doing. It’s tricky work; the eyes are slippery and small enough that he has to be precise with the movement of the tiny knife they’re meant to use to keep from cutting himself. Two students have already had injuries spelled away by Professor B.J., who is currently wandering the classroom with a sharp eye to spot any other accidents and catch them before the students have a catch to more than hiss in pain; but Clay is good with the knife, at least when he doesn’t have to think about anything else. And Akane’s watching the bubbling cauldron, and Akane’s handling the spellwork, and that means Clay is left free to focus on the pleasantly monotonous task of halving and then quartering the slippery spheres under his fingers. He can pin all his focus to the job, can let his attention zero in on the motion of his hands, until he doesn’t even notice Akane reaching for the edge of the cutting board, until he jumps as the board starts to draw away as he cuts through the last of the eyes.

“Sorry,” Akane says, grimacing apology for a moment, but he only makes eye contact with Clay for a heartbeat before he’s looking back to the cauldron. “I just…” There’s a pause, a beat while Akane mouths out the last seconds of a count Clay long since lost, and then he upends the board over the cauldron to drop the eyes into the bubbling surface of the potion. There’s a hiss, a fizz of smoke as Akane leans back and out of range; and then the whole thing shimmers iridescent for a moment, the surface glistening like a pearl as the boiling ceases. Akane heaves a sigh, and lowers his wand to snuff out the flame under the cauldron; with the distraction of his focus gone Clay can see the relief behind his eyes.

“I needed it right then,” Akane says as he looks back to Clay to flash him an apologetic grin. “Sorry for startling you.”

“I didn’t know it was so soon,” Clay admits, feeling a prickle of retrospective panic run down his spine. “You should have told me, what if I wasn’t done in time?”

“You were,” Akane tells him. “You get tense when you think you’re under pressure and you’re not as careful about what you’re doing. If you weren’t going to be done in time I would have told you to speed up.”

“That’s not reassuring,” Clay starts, but then there’s an interruption, “Hey there boys” in the low rumble of Professor B.J.’s voice, and Clay’s speech cuts off with the wave of nerves that still hits him any time one of their professors speaks to him directly.

“Sir,” Akane says, his shoulders straightening and mouth falling out of his half-grin into calm composure as he turns to the other. “Our Philandering Philter is complete.”

“Hm,” B.J. considers, leaning in to frown at the surface of their cauldron. “It sure seems to be.” Clay reaches for one of their empty vials to offer to the professor, but before he’s lifted his hand B.J. has reached for the surface of the liquid to dip his pinky finger into the potion. Clay flinches from the possibility of a burn, but B.J. doesn’t so much as blink, and when he draws his hand free the potion clings to his skin with the same consistency as cool honey.

“Feels right,” the professor says, and then he brings his finger to his mouth to suck the liquid off his skin. Clay’s eyes go wide on shock -- even Akane takes a surprised inhale -- but B.J. neither falls to the floor in convulsions nor turns into something awful as Clay half-feared he would. There’s nothing at all that happens, in fact, as far as Clay can tell; B.J. looks just the same as always, his short-cut hair a rich chestnut against his scalp and the breadth of his shoulders surprisingly graceful as he stretches a hand out in front of him to consider the angle of his fingers.

“Yep,” he says, his voice deep and resonant in a way Clay can feel all down his spine and tingling in the tips of his fingers. “That’ll do it.” Then he shakes his head and the illusion is gone all at once, the uncanny attractiveness briefly clinging to his features evaporating to leave Clay blinking as if trying to clear stars from his eyes. “That was some impressive brewing work you two did. You usually pair together, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Akane says, so fast Clay looks over at him and blinks surprise at the defensive speed of his answer. “There’s no problem, is there?”

“Ah,” B.J. says, lifting a hand to ruffle through his hair. “Nah, guess not. You do good work together.” He sounds sincere, but he’s looking at their cauldron still, frowning at the surface in a way that makes Clay’s spine prickle uncomfortably with self-consciousness. “Do you always split the tasks up like this, you brewing and him prepping?”

“We do,” Akane says, and he really _does_ sound defensive now, Clay can hear it clearly under the tone of his voice. “Clay does better when he can focus on the prep and I’m good at keeping track of time.”

B.J. looks from Akane to Clay. “You don’t mind, do you? If you want a turn doing the other part we could mix up the pairings in the class.”

“What?” Clay asks, caught off-guard by the question suddenly directed at him. “N...no, no, I like it like this.” He looks at Akane for help but Akane is staring at the wall, his jaw set and his expression so carefully blank it’s a clear tell for some unspoken frustration. “I always screwed up my potions last year no matter who I was partnered with, Akane’s great.”

B.J.’s expression relaxes. “Ah,” he says, and looks back at Akane with a softer expression. “Well. As long as you’re both learning.”

“Absolutely,” Akane says in that same strange, flattened tone. “Is there anything else, sir?”

B.J. waves his hand. “No, that’s fine. Good work, you two.” And he’s leaving, moving away down the aisle to consider the result of the next pair’s cauldron.

Clay doesn’t speak right away. There’s a tension along Akane’s jawline that says silence would be better for the moment, a weird sharpness in his movements as he levitates some of their potion into a vial. Usually he walks it up to the front of the room himself; today he hands it to Clay without lifting his head, his gaze directed so intently at their desk Clay half-expects the dark wood to singe with the force of the other’s stare. He takes the vial up to the front and comes back with a frown on his face to find Akane cleaning the whole desk with aggressively brisk movements of his wand and nothing like the usual elegant flourish he demonstrates.

“I can help,” Clay offers as he approaches, frowning at the dark of Akane’s bowed head. “You don’t have to do it yourself.”

Akane’s hand drops. His fingers tighten against the handle of his wand, going white-knuckled for a moment as his lips tighten; then: “He thought I was bullying you,” low and hissing, hurt ringing on the words like they’re an open wound.

Clay feels shock hit him like a physical blow, the very idea on Akane’s lips so unfathomable he has to struggle to catch it in his mind. “ _What_?” he finally manages, and it’s a little too loud, he can see in the way Akane flinches as the other looks up at him, but he can’t quite pull his voice into the low range Akane had hit. “That’s ridiculous, you’re not--you wouldn’t.” He blinks, shaking his head like he’s pushing himself back into reality. “You _help_ me.” Akane’s still looking at him through his hair, the bright of his eyes dimmed by the dark of the locks, but his hand is easing a little on the handle of his wand, and his shoulders are untensing from the hunched line they were making before.

“I couldn’t have brewed that on my own,” Clay says in his best attempt at an undertone, stepping forward to tip the last scraps off the cutting board and into the trash bin alongside their desk. Akane steps aside to let him move, watching him instead of helping; as Clay wipes the board clean he moves to put his wand away and let his hold on it go entirely. “I work better with you.”

“I couldn’t have done it alone either,” Akane says, somewhat more softly than Clay’s too-loud tone but more gently than the brittle edge he had before. He’s watching Clay’s hands as the other moves, his attention easing out of tense strain. “We complement each other’s strengths.”

“Right,” Clay says, setting the cutting board aside and looking at Akane until the other lifts his chin to meet Clay’s gaze. Clay tries a smile; it’s almost sincere, even, only wobbles a very little bit on uncertainty. “You’re not going to find another partner, are you?”

Akane’s laugh is sudden, and bright, and so loud the pair next to them jump and startle at the sound. Clay grins relief even before Akane reaches out to clap a hand to his shoulder in immediate reassurance.

“No,” he says, and when he smiles it lights sky-bright in his eyes. “You’re the only partner for me.”

Clay doesn’t look up to see the way B.J. is looking at them, or the way the professor huffs a smile and looks away at the vials on the desk in front of him. He’s too busy smiling back at Akane.


	11. Pride

“You’ve got her,” Akane declares from the side of the chess board. “Don’t let up now, you got this.”

“No he doesn’t,” Soul drawls. He’s not even looking at the board; he’s slouched far back in his chair, blinking more consideration at the ceiling than at the flow of the game in front of him. “Maka’s not going to let herself get beat by a Hufflepuff.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a Hufflepuff,” Maka snaps, and Akane looks up in time to see Soul cut his eyes sideways at her and grin at this predictable reaction. “It’s better than a Gryffindor who’s too afraid to play me at all.”

“I just know you’ll kick my ass,” Soul tells her. “Courage isn’t the same thing as recklessness. Maybe if you understood that you would have ended up with the cool kids like me.”

“Shut up,” Maka tells him. “I’d rather die than be in the same house as Papa.”

Akane glances back at Clay, half-ready to hush the other two to silence so the other can focus; but Clay’s not looking at them, isn’t actually looking at anything except the board in front of him. He’s wearing the same frown he put on some fifteen minutes ago, his shoulders hunched forward on the attention he’s been demonstrating since the midgame; Akane’s not even sure his words of encouragement are being heard at all, from how intently Clay is gazing at the game. He hasn’t even reached for the board; he has his elbow braced at the edge of the table, his chin propped against his hand while he gazes contemplatively at the array of chess pieces in front of him. It makes Akane smile; there’s always something charming about Clay’s intense focus on some pursuit, the more so for how different his approach is to the standard Slytherin techniques of attempted psychological warfare in addition to the rhythm of pseudo-combat on the board. He’s barely spoken since the game began, either in response to Maka’s comments or to Akane’s gentle teasing, and now Akane is very sure he’s not paying the least attention to the riotous conversation happening between the two first-years over the corner of the board. His focus is enough to hold Akane’s at well, enough to knock the amused smile from his mouth into sincere consideration; and then Clay’s expression clears, and he heaves a breath of relief, and Akane knows the other’s won even before Clay reaches to urge his knight forward.

“It’s over,” Akane says as Maka frowns and reaches for her queen. “He’s got it locked down now.”

“What?” Maka pushes her queen forward and looks up to glare at Akane. “Just because _you_ can beat me doesn’t mean he can. You win every time against Clay.”

“I win every time against a lot of people,” Akane tells her. Clay’s moving his rook forward without any hesitation, now; Akane doesn’t have to watch to know what move he’s making. “And he plays against me a lot, and he’s been getting better.”

“See,” Maka says, cutting her eyes sideways to glare at Soul. “It’s not _recklessness_ , it’s improvement.”

“Sounds like a fancy way to say _studying_ ,” Soul informs her, still looking more interested in the ceiling than in the game finishing on the board in front of them. “We could always do something fun like sneak into the kitchens instead.”

“Just because _you_ don’t see any purpose to improving yourself--”

“There,” Clay says aloud, skipping his knight forward again and falling back to his seat with a sigh. “Check.”

Maka’s head snaps back around to stare at the board. “What?” She sees the check immediately and frowns at the pieces; her move is fast, like her uncertainty is pushing her to rush into the future to see the end of Clay’s strategy. “Okay, but--”

“Check,” Clay says again, before he’s even touched his queen. She strides forward without the assistance of his urging, clearing the spaces in a straight-line path towards Maka’s king; he recoils from her approach, lifting his shield and trembling in anticipation of the blow that doesn’t fall.

“Damn,” Maka says, her irritation fading out to concentration as she considers the board. It’s just a few steps out now, Akane can see, but her forehead doesn’t uncrease with understanding; she draws her king back instead, away from the danger of Clay’s queen, and glances back up as warily as if Clay’s words will be a death sentence. There’s no comment this time, as Akane knew there wouldn’t be; Clay makes his next move in silence, the structure of his pieces falling into the outline of the trap Akane saw forming some turns ago. Maka takes longer over her turn than she did before, frowning hard at the board with the focus that sometimes makes Akane think she should have been in Ravenclaw and not his own house; but then Soul groans “Fuck,” and kicks back in his chair, and Maka’s head snaps around as she glares at him.

“What?” she demands. “What is it?”

“You’re done,” Soul says. “He’s got you.”

“He does _not_ ,” Maka insists, turning back to glare at the board. “I’m doing fine.”

“You were before,” Soul tells her. “He’s been hemming you in for the last few moves though.”

“He’s--” Maka says, and then pauses, her eyes going wide as she stares at the board. “ _Damn_ ,” she hisses, and pushes one of her pieces forward in an attempt to slip free of the threat Clay has constructed. It’s not a bad move -- it would have flustered Clay earlier in the school year -- but now Clay barely blinks, has hardly started to say “Rook to--” before his piece is marching forward with aggressively certain footfalls across the board. Maka’s king falls back on his own, this time, before Clay has even given the warning of check, and then his queen steps forward and Clay says “Checkmate,” with his voice heavier on relief than on the satisfaction of victory. It’s Akane who laughs delight, and Maka who groans in defeat and topples back from the board while Soul leans in to inspect the array of the pieces.

“He really got you,” Soul says, his voice resonant on admiration. “That wasn’t even very close.”

“It was,” Clay and Akane say in perfect sync. Akane glances up to catch Clay’s eye, then grins and ducks his head to let the other go on speaking. Clay takes a breath, swallowing audibly, but when he moves it’s to sit up straighter as he leans in over the board to gesture to Maka’s rook in the far back corner. “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through the midgame at all. If she had come farther out for another turn or two I would have been done for.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Maka growls, frowning at the board as if it’s personally offended her. “I knew I should have kept pressing you.”

“I can’t believe _you_ were too cautious,” Soul laughs, then falls back to lift his hands in surrender as Maka turns on him. “Don’t look like that. I woulda pulled back too, he would have beat me way back at the beginning.”

“ _I’ll_ beat you next time,” Maka snaps, but then she looks back at the board and heaves a sigh of surrender that slumps her shoulders. “I didn’t see that last move coming at all.” She lifts her head to look across the board at Clay, and when she smiles at him whatever irritation is in her expression is limited to competitive self-deprecation. “Good game,” she says, and reaches out to offer her hand across the board.

Akane looks back to Clay in time to see the other boy flush dark all across his face with the self-consciousness he always shows when someone compliments him. It takes him a moment to collect himself enough to accept Maka’s aggressively firm handshake, and then Maka’s pieces start to clap for him too and Clay whimpers embarrassment and ducks his head in a completely futile attempt to hide the crimson that spreads from his cheeks across his forehead and to the tips of his ears. Even with his head ducked Akane can see the color along the back of the other’s neck; it makes him laugh as he reaches out to clap a hand to Clay’s shoulders while the other retrieves his hand from Maka’s grip to cover his face with his palms.

“Don’t worry,” Akane says in his most soothing tone. “Next time you can play against me and you won’t have to worry about winning at all.”

Clay lifts his head enough to give Akane a mock glare. “Shut up,” he says, reaching out to shove at the other’s shoulder, and Akane laughs and lets his hand slide up to ruffle disorder into the pale of Clay’s hair. Clay tries to frown at him, but the dip of his mouth gives way to a smile, and then Soul leans in to nudge his arm with an elbow and say “Well played, man,” with the casual ease that always makes his compliments weigh the more with sincerity. Clay looks back at the words, his smile going wider to light up his face, and Akane keeps watching him instead of the board where Maka is starting to replay the last several moves of the match with the willing assistance of the pieces arrayed in front of her.

He finds even the rhythm of the replayed game isn’t as interesting as the glow of shy pride across Clay’s face.


	12. Communication

Clay isn’t the earliest of risers.

He supposes he does well enough for himself, compared to the groans he has heard from his classmates and the stories his mother likes to tell about her own high school days; she keeps expecting him to sleep until noon, when Clay can’t see how anyone could sleep through the brightest part of the day in peace. But he does usually stay asleep through his father rising with the dawn, generally doesn’t rouse to consciousness until his mother knocks at his door or the smell of his father cooking breakfast pulls him there, and he is still very soundly asleep when the tapping starts.

It’s a faint sound, distant in the background of his convoluted dream; it’s easy to incorporate into the rescue mission he’s in the middle of as some kind of gigantic clock with an arrhythmic tick that serves as soundtrack for the extremely important yet oddly vague task Clay needs to accomplish. He stirs, turning over and into the shift of his dream’s tone, and the sound shifts too, becoming something sharper and louder than what went before. It makes Clay’s forehead crease, his mental images flickering uncertainly at the interruption, and then he opens his eyes and his dream gives way to the dusky pre-dawn glow outside and the scratch of a claw against his window. He realizes right away what it must be, is stumbling towards the glass before he has woken up enough to trust his footing; he careens sideways, smacking himself hard into the edge of his desk, and then makes it to his cracked-open window so he can fit his fingers into the gap at the bottom and urge it wide enough for his owl Hamilton to come through.

“Sorry,” Clay yawns, reaching out to slide his fingers over the smooth dark of Hamilton’s feathers. “I was asleep.” Hamilton gives him a look as if to say this is patently obviously and scratches against the windowsill to draw Clay’s attention to his foot; Clay fumbles the letter off his leg and Hamilton hops off the sill to the floor, gliding the very short distance on half-spread wings before he settles himself into the dark space below Clay’s desk in preparation of what looks like a nap for the foreseeable future. Clay yawns again as he draws the blinds half-shut to keep the room in darkness for Hamilton’s behalf, and moves towards the door so he can navigate the stairs to find a better source of light that won’t interrupt his owl’s rest.

“Morning,” his dad says as Clay stumbles into the kitchen over the sound of running water filling the teakettle. “You’re up early.” The kettle goes on the stove and his father glances back over his shoulder to see the paper Clay is smoothing against the edge of the table. “Ah.” He turns back to the stove. “How’s Akane doing?”

“Good,” Clay says automatically, even though he doesn’t know that for sure, even though he’s been doubting the truth of those same words in Akane’s handwriting more with each passing day and each oddly timed reply to his own lengthy daily messages. “He’s been practicing wizard chess, I think he’s going to destroy me when I play against him next.”

“You could always play regular chess,” his dad suggests. “I used to be pretty decent myself.”

Clay looks up from the angled slope of Akane’s handwriting. “Really?”

“Really.” His father is running the tap to warm now to fill the teapot with hot water in anticipation of the boiling liquid to come; he shuts off the faucet and sets the lid in place before he turns around to draw back a chair and sit at the other side of the table. “I think I have an old chess board in storage, I’ll see if I can track it down. Might be less exciting than whatever you fancy magical types play, but if the rules aren’t too different you could practice a little.”

“I think the rules are the same,” Clay says. “Or close, anyway.”

“You didn’t tell me your friend played chess,” his dad says. “I didn’t think you’d like it much.”

Clay shrugs. “It’s fun when there’s time to think about it,” he says. “Akane and Maka play speed chess sometimes, but I’m terrible at that.”

His dad laughs. “Yeah, you usually need time to think things through, don’t you?” The kettle hisses the threat of a whistle and he pushes back to check on it while Clay turns back to his letter to lose himself in the next paragraph of dark ink against the creamy parchment. It’s not that there’s much there -- Akane’s talking about flying practice, now, that his younger cousin Ao is already beating him in races and that he thinks he may not be cut out for Quidditch after all -- but the lack of any real substance just makes Clay hunger the more for it, makes him read and reread the sharp-pointed words like he can somehow get more information out of the shadows on the page.

“Morning,” comes a voice from the doorway, familiar even husky on sleep as it is. “What’s wrong, Clay?”

“What?” Clay looks up, startled by his mother’s arrival; he hadn’t heard her coming down the stairs any more than he heard his father pour the tea into the cups he’s now bringing over to the table. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re frowning like that letter is a homework assignment you forgot about.” His mother takes the cup directly from his father’s hands without letting it touch the table and brings it to her face to breathe in against the steam. Her eyes are still heavy with sleep, her voice still rusty on drowsiness, but she’s watching Clay with enough attention to prickle self-consciousness down his spine. “Isn’t that from Akane?”

Clay can feel himself flush into color as his father sets a cup on the table by his elbow. “I get letters from other people too, sometimes.”

His mother gives him a look. “Not that you bring down to the table with you,” she says. “Don’t you usually like his letters?”

“Mm,” Clay hums. “Yeah.” He reaches up to ruffle a hand through his hair as he frowns down at the page in his hand. “It’s just.” He lets the letter drop to the table and closes his fingers at the edge of the sheet to toy with the parchment. “He sounds sadder in each letter he writes.”

There’s a breath of quiet; then the drag of a chair across the floor, the click of ceramic as Clay’s mother sets her cup against the table. “Does he say there’s anything wrong?” she asks as she settles into the chair.

“No,” Clay sighs. “He doesn’t _say_ that he’s sad. He just talks about what he’s doing, or studying, or practicing. He’s not _telling_ me that he’s unhappy.” He frowns at the letter, at the points of Akane’s neat writing, the crisp edges of the text like they’re bricks in a wall to keep the words on the page from leaking with the bright reality of Akane’s presence in reality. “It’s just something about the way he writes.”

“I see,” his mom says. There’s an odd tone in her voice, but when Clay looks up she’s not looking at him; she’s glancing at his father instead, who is looking back at her rather than at Clay either. It’s just for a moment; then Clay’s mother says “Well,” and Clay’s father steps in smoothly as if they’re sharing the same thought out of two different mouths: “Do you think your friend would be interested in visiting the next long break you have?”

Clay can feel his eyes go wide on shock. “What?”

“We _are_ quite far away from the city,” his mother says, bringing her cup of tea to her lips again for another sip. “And it’s late in the summer, we only have a week left now. But if you think Akane would like to come to stay for a few days, we’d be happy to host him.”

“A week or two, even,” Clay’s father puts in without turning away from the bowl of what smells like blueberry waffle batter. “However long he wants to visit. It’d be nice to meet him.”

“Save a few trees, too,” Clay’s mother puts in, reaching out to tap against the edge of the parchment lying across the table. “You could talk instead of writing novels back and forth on a daily basis.”

“We don’t,” Clay protests, but he’s starting to smile, too distracted by bubbling happiness to even rise to this gentle teasing. “Can I really?”

“Sure.” Clay’s mother tips back in her chair and takes another long drink of her tea. “Two boys can’t be much harder to keep an eye on than one.”

“That’s right,” his father agrees. He spoons batter onto the heat of the waffle iron; there’s a hiss of steam, a burst of delicious scent into the air, and then he closes the iron so the batter can cook against the heat. “We can’t have schoolboys being sad they’re _not_ in school, that’s all backwards.”

Clay laughs. “Okay,” he says, and draws the parchment back towards him as he reaches for his cup of tea. “I’ll ask him.”

The idea keeps him smiling through the rest of Akane’s letter.


	13. Relief

It’s a relief to be back at Hogwarts.

Akane thinks summer this year was even worse than the last. The complete silence he learned last summer carried him through the past three months as well as it did last year, but he’s sure his parents are gaining traction for the vicious commentary they offer over dinner as casually as if speaking of evicting Mudbloods from ‘proper’ wizarding society is utterly normal conversation to be having with their barely-teenage son. This summer Akane abandoned eye contact as well as speaking and let his hair grow long to shadow his face to invisibility, and for all his mother’s complaints about the length he managed to make it back to school without the threatened haircut being instituted. He doesn’t think it would make much of a difference -- he’s sure his hair never grew so fast before he had such a desire for it to -- but it’s still better to avoid as much interaction as he can with the family he has to return to each summer. But summer is over, and Akane is free, and even the wait at the Hogwarts platform for the train to arrive doesn’t dampen his spirits. It doesn’t matter what his parents do, it doesn’t matter what they are thinking or saying to each other for the next nine months; Akane is at school, and Clay is on his way, and soon he’ll have far more than his ever-growing collection of letters to brighten his day.

The station is all but empty for the duration of Akane’s wait; he’s glad for the book he brought with him, even if he can’t manage to focus on the page for more than five minutes before he imagines the sound of a distant train and is lifting his head to peer down the tracks again. The only other student there is Harvar, a Ravenclaw boy Akane only barely knows from his Quidditch plays, his eyes hidden behind a visor that pushes aside the idea of casual conversation as effectively as his blunt replies to Akane’s polite attempts at small talk do. Akane is more than willing to subside to his own thoughts on one side of the platform while he waits for the train’s arrival; it’s no worse than his self-imposed isolation over the summer, and the promise of companionship to come is more than enough to keep him smiling even when he looks up for the dozenth time to see no train anywhere in sight. By the time the train actually does arrive Akane has anticipated it so many times that he doesn’t look up for the rattle of metal in the distance, doesn’t turn his head for the smell of smoke in the air; but then there’s a whistle, a sharp, piercing note of warning as the train approaches the station, and when Akane looks up he can see the crimson of the train rounding the turn far down the tracks. His heart skips, his breathing catches on sudden adrenaline, and he closes his book without marking his place as he surges to his feet. On the other side of the platform Harvar is moving too, standing to edge all the way up to the line marking out the safe zone along the side of the arrivals platform, but Akane leaves him to it; he stays farther back, leaning against the railing at the far edge while he waits for the train to slow to a stop and release the other students.

Clay is faster this time. Akane was ready to wait for several minutes, prepared for the entire train to clear before Clay’s bright hair emerged from the exit doors; but there’s barely a dozen students that have climbed down the steps before there’s the clatter of movement, a familiar yelp of “Sorry!” from inside the train, and Akane straightens to take an involuntary step forward just as Clay stumbles off onto the platform. His robes are lopsided, his tie slung around his neck instead of tied, his luggage bouncing awkwardly along an edge instead of rolling as it’s meant to; but he looks bright, sunshiney and warm and far more real than Akane’s summertime-blurred memory left him, and then he sees Akane and his whole face breaks into a smile.

“Akane!” His arm comes up, his hand waving as if Akane can’t see him over the very few feet of distance between them, as if the shout of his name isn’t enough to get the other boy’s attention. Clay’s robes slide farther sideways with the motion, tipping off his shoulder to catch around his elbow and threaten his feet with tripping. Akane moves fast, crossing the distance to save Clay from the danger of tangling his feet in the loose edge of his robe, and Clay steps over the last of the gap to fling his free arm around Akane’s shoulders.

“It’s good to see you!” he says, his voice half-muffled from the angle of his face against the other’s hair. “I missed you.” He lets his hold go while Akane is still trying to figure out how to offer a hug of response around the mess Clay has managed to make of his robes; Akane’s wrist catches at Clay’s sleeve and for a moment they’re tangled together while Akane looks down at the fabric wound around his fingers and tries to work himself free. “You got taller.”

Akane manages to wiggle his wrist loose of Clay’s sleeve and retrieves his attention to bring back to Clay’s face. “What?” Clay’s looking at the top of his head instead of at his expression, his eyes wide and startled as he considers.

“You grew,” Clay says, and lifts a hand to touch the top of his head before he draws it out through the air. The line he makes isn’t perfectly straight -- Akane can see the movement wobble into an imprecise curve as he moves -- but the fact remains that his fingertips skim Akane’s hair as he moves over the other’s head, that the difference between their heights is no greater than an inch or two even allowing for Clay’s highly questionable measuring technique.

“Oh.” Akane blinks. It’s true that he’s not looking up at Clay anymore, that he can meet the other’s gaze without the angle of his head that the attempt required at the start of the summer. “I guess I did.”

Clay’s smile spreads all over his face, crinkling into the corners of his eyes in a way that catches Akane’s breathing on odd pressure even before the other boy breaks into a laugh. “Did you not notice?” he asks. “Didn’t you need new clothes over the summer?”  
Akane shakes his head. “I wear mostly robes at home,” he says. Now that he thinks about it the hem of his school uniform is above his ankles now, significantly further from the ground than it was when he last put it on. “I guess I didn’t realize they were getting shorter.”

“You’ll have to get new ones,” Clay tells him, still grinning all over his face like he’s forgotten how to stop. “Or have your parents send you some.”

“Or I could just borrow some of your extras,” Akane suggests, as helpless to his answering grin as Clay seems to be to his own all-over happiness. “They should fit me okay, right?”

“Hey,” Clay laughs. “That’s not fair, I need clothes of my own!”

“It’s perfectly fair,” Akane announces, tossing his head with as much put-upon arrogance as he can muster. “After I had to suffer you looming over me for a year it’s only reasonable that you should pay me back.”

“By letting you take my clothes?”

“Exactly.” There’s a movement from behind Clay, the shadow of another student struggling down the hallway of the train; Akane glances at the approaching passenger before reaching out to catch his fingers at Clay’s sleeve and draw him forward and across the platform. “It’s only reasonable.” Clay’s still dragging his bag behind him; Akane lets his sleeve go as they come to the edge of the platform, reaching out instead to catch at the handle of the bag and tug it around so it’s rolling properly across the surface. Clay looks down, startled by the motion, and Akane draws back from the casual warm of Clay’s fingers under his to leave the other to wheel his bag along the path to the row of waiting carriages and the skeletal shapes drawing them.

“Is it,” Clay deadpans. “I think you’re defining that word somewhat differently than I do.”

Akane looks back. Clay is watching him instead of the carriages, still smiling amusement at the other boy without sparing so much as a glance for the thestrals Akane can see as clearly as he can Clay standing in front of him.

“Am I,” Akane asks, moving sideways towards one of the carriages at random. “Do you have a definition then, Mr. Dictionary?” The question makes Clay stammer himself out of composure, exactly as Akane intended it to, and Akane grins as he pulls the door of the carriage open for them both.

He doesn’t give the thestrals any more attention than Clay does.


	14. Stories

“I don’t know why I decided to take this class,” Clay sighs, only making it halfway through the statement before he’s caught by a yawn big enough that he can feel it strain across his shoulders with the tremor of the effort. “I could be sleeping instead of doing homework.”

“You thought Astronomy sounded cool,” Akane answers him without looking up from the hunch he has over his assignment sheet. He’s holding his lit wand in one hand to illuminate the page so he can write with his other; the light is faint, barely more than the pale glow of the moon overhead to save them both from the headache a brighter light would give their night-adjusted vision. “Isn’t it better than Arithmancy would have been?”

“Oh god,” Clay shudders. “Yes.”

“That’s what I thought.” Akane sounds smug; when Clay turns his head to look at him he’s smiling over his homework sheet as he flourishes through the last line of his notes. “Okay. That’s it for the written part.” He opens the bag next to him, fumbling through the dark shapes inside until he’s content with the safety of his notes, and then turns back to look up at the sky as he shakes his wand to dark. “Now we just need to actually find the constellations themselves.”

“That’s the easy part,” Clay tells him, tipping back to lie flat over the floor of the Astronomy Tower. The stone under his shoulders is too hard for comfort and cool enough to keep any chance of accidental sleep far distant, but the view is better this way, when he can blink up and see the whole curve of the sky overhead without craning his neck. With his eyes adjusted the stars make the night glow with light; Clay can see the sweep of light that spans the middle of the sky, that makes him want to squint against what seems like too-much illumination all at once.

“Are you that good at identification?” Akane wants to know. He’s still sitting up and not looking at the sky at all; he’s got his head tipped back to smile down at Clay instead of looking up at the sky over them.

“What?” Clay asks without expecting an answer. “No? Maybe. It’s easy to see the shapes, at least.” He reaches an arm up and gestures vaguely at the arrangement of the stars overhead. “That’s the W one. And the Big Dipper, over there. That one’s the...princess, I can’t remember her name. Andrea?”

Akane huffs a laugh. “I don’t think there’s an Andrea constellation, Clay.”

Clay can feel himself flush. “Well. That’s what I mean. I’m not good at identifying them either.”

Akane is still looking down at him, still smiling like he’s half-forgotten what they’re supposed to be doing. “Finding them in the sky is always the hard part for me. The names are easy to memorize later.” He looks away, tilting his head back so his hair falls night-dark against the back collar of his robes. “Where’s the. What did you call the first one?”

“The W,” Clay says immediately. It’s easy to find the bright zig-zag of stars as soon as he looks for it, easier to sweep his index finger along the path to trace out the letter. “Right there.”

“Wait,” Akane says. “I don’t see it.”

“There.” Clay moves again, but Akane doesn’t make any sound of recognition. He tries for some other source of orienting them both to the same point in the sky. “Where the Quidditch pitch is, except higher, maybe a third of the way up the sky.”

“Hang on,” Akane says, and then he’s turning back, bracing himself against the tower floor as he tips back to lie across the stones next to Clay. He shifts his weight, making a futile attempt to get more comfortable, and then presses in close, so near that his shoulder bumps against Clay’s and his hair falls to tangle with the other’s. From this angle there’s barely a gap between their views at all; Clay’s perspective is almost perfectly in-line with the other boy’s. “Show me again.”

“It’s up there,” Clay says again, lifting his hand to trace out the connections between the stars glowing in the outline of the familiar constellation. “See where I’m pointing?”

“Oh,” Akane says, breathing the word into epiphany in the air, and Clay smiles satisfaction even before Akane reaches out to gesture towards the shape overhead. “Cassiopeia. I guess it does make a W.”

“I can’t remember the name,” Clay admits. “My mom always just called it the W when I was a kid.”

Akane tips his head, the motion more a gesture of interest that Clay can feel bump against him than an actual meaningful motion. “Your parents did astronomy with you?”

“Not officially or anything,” Clay says, shaking his head in unthinking negation. “They just pointed out the shapes until I could see them too. The only name I ever learned is Orion.” He turns his head to scan the horizon before gesturing towards the familiar rectangle of stars rising over the treeline. “There he is over there.”

“I see it.” Akane shifts next to Clay, moving his shoulders in another attempt to get more comfortable. “Show me the princess again.”

“Oh,” Clay says, and reaches out to trail the line of his finger against the shape of the constellation overhead. It seems like he ought to be able to reach out and feel the stars glowing warm against his fingertips, like they’re only a few inches away from his outstretched hand; but then he blinks, and perspective fits itself back around him, and they’re as impossibly distant as they ever were. “Down there, near Casseo…”

“Cassiopeia.”

“Cassiopeia,” Clay recites back, adopting a little of Akane’s ease over the unfamiliar word by the echo of the other’s voice in his throat. “See her?”

“No,” Akane says, sounding vague with focus. “Show me again.” Clay does, a second and then a third time; he’s halfway through his fourth attempt when Akane says “ _Ah_ ,” from next to him, the sound warm on gratified understanding. “ _Andromeda_.”

“Oh,” Clay says, feels the name settle into recognition in his head with all the satisfaction of unravelling the trick to a riddle. “That’s it, yeah.” He lets his hand drop, heaving a sigh of relief at getting the answer he’d been idly reaching for in the back of his head. “Andromeda.”

Akane huffs a laugh from beside him. “Is learning the names too much like studying?”

“I try to learn them,” Clay protests without looking away from the pattern of the stars overhead. “I just forget when I’m not actually thinking about it. It’s like how I’m so bad at Potions.”

“You’re not bad at Potions,” Akane says, sounding more distracted than insistent. “You just have to think about the brewing like a process. You do fine when you’re going from muscle memory.”

“Sure,” Clay says without feeling particularly convinced. “How am I supposed to learn constellation names from muscle memory?”  
“You can think about them differently than you are right now,” Akane tells him. Clay tips his head to look at Akane sideways; the other boy is still looking up at the sky, his eyes clear and mouth soft as he considers the light overhead. “You never remember just lists of things when you try to learn that way.”

Clay sighs. “They’re just names, though. How else am I supposed to learn them?”

Akane’s mouth curves on a smile. “They’re not just names,” he says, and he reaches an arm towards the sky to gesture at the angles of Cassiopeia overhead. “Did you know Andromeda is Cassiopeia’s daughter?”

Clay blinks into the dark. “She is?”

“Yep.” Akane lets his hand drop by a span of inches, shifting his pointing finger to sketch out Andromeda curving against the sky. “Cassiopeia was the queen and Andromeda was the princess, like you said. Cassiopeia boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids and angered the god of the sea.”

Clay can feel his forehead crease on confusion. “Nereids?”

“Sea nymphs,” Akane says without looking away from the constellations. “The god of the sea, Poseidon, sent a vicious sea monster as punishment, and Andromeda was chained to a rock and left as a sacrifice for the monster.”

Clay takes a breath. “That’s horrible.”

“Mm,” Akane hums agreement. “But she was saved by the hero Perseus.”

“Perseus,” Clay repeats, understanding slotting into place in his thoughts like a puzzle piece. “He’s a constellation too.”

“And Pegasus,” Akane suggests. “The winged horse he rode on.”

“Yeah,” Clay says. “I know Pegasus. I didn’t know they were all part of the same story.”

“Yep.” Akane lets his arm fall, the weight of his hand dropping against his stomach. He’s still smiling when Clay glances at him, watching the constellations overhead as if they’re playing out some beloved movie in his head.

“Did you learn that when you were a kid?” Clay asks without looking away from Akane’s face. “About the stories and all that?”

“Yeah.” Akane sighs; for a moment Clay thinks he’s going to slide into the introspective silence that so often comes with him thinking of his family, that usually follows Clay asking about his childhood or his summer or anything outside the carefully framed walls of the castle. But he’s still smiling, and his shoulders haven’t tensed into that stress they adopt on this subject, and when Clay stays quiet Akane keeps talking in that gentle, half-distracted tone. “I learned about mythology when I was very young. They were like bedtime stories to me then.” He glances sideways to catch Clay watching him; his smile tugs brighter at the corner. “I never learned the constellations for them, though.”

“It’s better with the stories.” Clay looks away from Akane’s face and back to the pinpoints of light in the sky over them. “Are there more than those?”

“There’s more even to that one,” Akane says. “Do you want to hear it?”

Clay stares at the starlight overhead, sees the suggestion of shapes forming from the lines of familiar constellations, the blur of faces and people shifting themselves into stories in his head instead of just the outlines and indistinguishable names they have always been before. “Yeah,” he says, and tips his head to lean gently against the support of Akane’s. “Tell me the story.”

The floor of the tower doesn’t feel so uncomfortable underneath him anymore.


	15. Decide

Lord Death’s office is not what Akane envisioned it would be. He had pictured something ostentatious, grand and sweeping and overwhelming like the ceiling of the Great Hall, as stately and honorable as the castle itself appears to be. But the walls of books he imagined are absent, as is the breathlessly high ceiling he had always created in the space of his own head, and in the end it’s a simple room, done in pale colors instead of the weighty browns and golds Akane always imagined, with only a very few highlights of red and black in the form of the desk and the few picture frames on the walls. There’s a photo album in the corner, the cover reading just _Headmasters_ in a simple typeface; it’s the only thing to look at for any length of time, and so Akane does, reading and rereading and rerereading the title without moving, without reaching for the book itself, because it’s easier to forget who he is if he doesn’t move.

When the door behind the desk opens, it’s all at once. Akane doesn’t have time to more than lift his head before Lord Death is leaning over him, chirping “Hello, hello, good morning to you, Akane!” with as much energy as if they are old friends instead of a headmaster and a third-year student. He reaches for Akane’s hand and picks it up even though Akane is putting no strength at all into making the offer; Lord Death seems more than willing to go through the motions of an ordinary greeting regardless of Akane’s actions or lack thereof. After a moment he lets the other’s hand drop again so he can bustle around the edge of the desk; Akane expects him to sit in the chair opposite his own, but the headmaster doesn’t even reach for the furniture. He moves instead, pacing along behind the back of the desk with such a steady stride that he almost looks like he’s gliding more than walking.

“So,” he starts, apparently ready to begin the conversation without any further formalities. “Mr. Hoshi.” A sudden pivot as Lord Death turns to face him directly. “Do you mind if I call you Akane?”

It takes Akane a moment to collect his thoughts enough to form a coherent reply in his head, and another, longer pause before he can find the shape of the words on the back of his tongue. “Under the circumstances, sir, that would be preferable.”

“Ah,” Lord Death allows. “Yes. The circumstances.” He turns away to resume his pacing, but Akane still has the sense of absolute attention holding to him, as if Lord Death’s movement is a show of unconcern more than actual inattention. “I understand you received a message this morning from your family.”

“A Howler,” Akane corrects, his voice so completely flat it feels like someone else’s even as it leaves his lips. “I think everyone in the Great Hall knows, it would have been difficult to miss.”

“Yes,” Lord Death agrees. “The Hoshi family has had quite a...colorful history in the past. I hadn’t realized some of the old beliefs were still held so strongly.”

Akane fixes his attention on the flat of the desk in front of him. There’s no texture to it that he can see, not so much as a chip in the surface; it looks like it could be made of glass, like his touch would slide right off it if he tried to press his fingers against it. The mild curiosity of it gives the back of his mind something to focus on and lets him distract part of his awareness as he opens his mouth to let a reply drop off his lips unstudied. “Sir. I’m hardly unaware that my family is known for being hired assassins. There’s no need to attempt to shield me from unpleasant information.”

“Ah.” Lord Death clears his throat. Akane thinks it is probably intended to be a gentle sound. He doesn’t lift his gaze from the table. “Well then.” There’s a _crack_ as Lord Death claps his hands together; Akane jumps at the noise, his attention jerking up without his intention to land on the headmaster. “Let’s get right to the point then, shall we?”

Akane blinks, feeling entirely adrift in this conversation. At least it’s better than the numb cold in him before. “Sir?”

“You’re in something of a bind, aren’t you?” Lord Death says, the question so chirpingly energetic as to be entirely rhetorical. He turns to resume his pacing behind the desk; Akane watches him this time, tracking the other’s movement in case he claps again or suddenly moves forward. “You’ve been disowned as a member of your family. In front of several dozen witnesses, unfortunately. I imagine that decision is unlikely to be rescinded?”

“Uh,” Akane manages. He can hear the screech of the letter in his ears again, made faint by memory but still clear, as if it might still be shouting atrocities to the Great Hall. _Consorting with Mudbloods, dishonor to the family name, no son of ours_. He can imagine the expression on his mother’s face, the tight-lipped fury that she adopts whenever the subject of non-pureblood wizards comes up, can picture the rage his father must have flown into. He’s glad for the physical distance from the mansion that was his home, at least. “Yes. Unlikely.”

“Even if you were to return?”

Akane lifts his gaze in a rush of movement that makes his head spin. Lord Death has stopped pacing; he’s watching Akane from the other side of the desk, now, his focus fixed entirely on the other. There’s no suggestion in his tone, no warning or encouragement either one; it’s that, Akane thinks, more than anything else, that stalls the negation that wants to rise to his tongue, that stills his thoughts long enough to work through the possibility in his head. There’s the rage to get through, his mother’s ice and his father’s fire; he can imagine already the wards on his bedroom door, the days of solitude that would form out his existence if he returned. But he’s seen the family lineage mapped out alongside the front doors, knows the branches of it as well as he knows the shape of the Slytherin house crest, and he knows the single leaf that bears his name, can see the white space around his given name like the potential of siblings that never came to be is granting him more value by its absence.

“They might,” he admits, even as his stomach twists at the idea of what they would do to him, of what he would have to face. “If I returned home now.” He takes a breath and swallows back the immediate refusal that comes to his lips; it’s hard to do, the resistance burns like acid in his throat, and he can’t hold Lord Death’s gaze, has to drop his blurring vision to the smooth of the tabletop again. “Are you going to send me away?”

“What’s that?” Lord Death chirps. “No, no, certainly not.” Akane lifts his head in time to see the headmaster waving his hands wildly through the air, as if to chase away even the afterimage of Akane’s question. “Not unless you’d like to make that decision. I assume you would not be permitted to return to Hogwarts?”

Akane coughs himself into a laugh that comes out of his throat with all the edge of a sob on it. “No. Definitely not.”

“Well then.” Lord Death claps his hands together again. The sound is less startling when Akane can see it coming, but it’s still loud enough to echo in the enclosed space. “It’s quite simple, then, isn’t it?”

Akane stares back at the headmaster. “It is?”

“Of course.” Lord Death lets his hands drop to his sides and fixes Akane with the whole weight of his attention. Akane can feel his skin prickle with self-consciousness as if he can feel the headmaster’s stare like a physical weight against his skin. “You decide to return to your family and your heritage, or you elect to remain here at Hogwarts.”

Akane takes a moment to process this, to turn the words over in his head so he can be sure he hasn’t misunderstood them. “Elect to remain here?”

“Yes.” Lord Death turns aside to resume his pacing as he hums consideration. “The school year is of course no trouble at all; we would expect you to be here during those months anyway. The summer is a bit more difficult, but the dormitories are occasionally used for sixth- and seventh-years who are taking on summer apprenticeships with some of the professors. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t keep your own room, at least from a living space perspective. As for keeping yourself occupied, well, I’m sure you’ll have your homework, and if you’re interested in pursuing a special course of study we could find some options for you. Several of our professors do take advantage of the break for personal holidays, but Giriko generally remains, if you have any interest in a special course on Care of Magical Creatures. And Professor Stein is a bit of a recluse; generally he and Spirit remain in the castle over the summer months as well.”

“Spirit?” Akane asks.

Lord Death waves a hand. “Ah, Professor Albarn, he would be to you. I believe you’re friends and housemates with his daughter.”

“Ah,” Akane says. His head is spinning, his heart pounding itself into a near-panic of hope in his chest. “Maka. Yes.”

“As I was saying,” Lord Death goes on, resuming his pacing. “It would be easy enough to provide you with a place to stay; you’re hardly the first student to require these kind of special accommodations. Your cousin, of course, spends many of his summers here causing as much havoc in the castle as he can get away with, though I believe Sid has plans to take him on a vacation overseas this year. Regardless,” and he stops, straightening his shoulders as he turns back to face Akane. He seems taller, somehow, broader and a little more shadowy, as if he’s soaking up the darkness in the room into his robes to leave everything else glowing a little more brightly. “You are a student of Hogwarts at present, and we do not take that responsibility lightly. Should you choose to remain such, we will see to it you receive the education and support to which we committed upon your acceptance.” The words are calm, so steady and flat that Akane has no doubt in him of their sincerity.

“Of course,” Lord Death continues, still in that same steady tone. “There is much to be said for the bonds of family. I do not wish to encourage you to sever ties with your parents or the rest of your relations, as choosing to remain a student would do. There is also the matter of the Star Curse, which I believe would be enacted upon you as a renegade member should your disownment be made official. There are some steps we can take to mitigate its effects, as we have done with Black*Star, but I cannot guarantee that you would remain wholly unaffected by it. The Hoshi family has chosen to pursue a path and a set of beliefs that stand at odds with prevailing wizarding society at present; but there may come a time when such beliefs return to widespread acceptance. Even if they do not, the connections of blood are not ones to be set aside lightly, regardless of how heavy they may seem at times.” His attention is locking Akane to his chair, shuddering chills down his spine with the force of the adrenaline running through him. “This is a choice you must make yourself, Akane.”

Akane stares back at Lord Death for a long moment, feeling his heart pound against the inside of his ribcage; then he drops his chin to let his vision focus again on the smooth-slick surface of the desk between them. Lord Death doesn’t speak, and doesn’t move; he just waits, as silent and still as if he’s become a statue while Akane thinks, while Akane stares unseeing at the desk before him and lets memories rush impossibly quickly through his mind. He can remember the gentle stroke of his mother’s fingers against his hair, the low rumble of his father’s voice humming over a lullaby alongside the crack of a shout at some subpar dueling performance or the hiss of vitriol delivered casually over the dinner table. The pride of being sorted into Slytherin, the comfort that came with knowing where he was meant to be and how he was meant to behave; but the weight of that too, the times he’s looked at Ravenclaw or even Hufflepuff and wondered if maybe he wouldn’t be happier there, if maybe he couldn’t be a prodigy at some subject if he dared to let himself excel beyond the bounds of _ordinary_. The burden of keeping Clay’s letters a secret, the late-night adrenaline rush of thinking he would get caught for sending a response to a friend less than human in his parent’s eyes; the pressure of holidays spent with his extended family, with every eye judging him as worthy or unworthy of the family name, as a potential success or a doomed failure like his estranged cousin proved himself. The ache of hours of dueling across his shoulders, the dark silence that awaited him in the too-large mansion if he took too long at practice; the trip his father took him on when he was ten to watch his uncle at his job, to press the weight of his heritage against his shoulders to stifle his scream when the target collapsed in a splash of red so bright it didn’t even look like blood for the first moment. All the parts of Akane’s life that he thought were normal, once, that he thought were ordinary; and Clay’s laugh, the easy friendliness of his smile, the _you should come visit next summer_ in his last letter, as if admitting to friendship with a Muggleborn is something Akane could ever get away with, no matter how perfect his behavior or how pristine his bloodline. And the Howler today, the red envelope folding itself to the shape of a mouth before Akane’s fingers had even touched it, screeched words reducing the boy beside him to an insult, to a _thing_ instead of a person, to a black spot on Akane’s perfect record instead of the best thing Akane’s ever known. Akane doesn’t know how his family found out, doesn’t think he’ll ever know who carried the story or accidentally offered the truth to them; but it doesn’t matter, not really, not when he knows what his answer is going to be.

“I’ll stay,” he says, hearing his voice clear and unwavering on the words, and then he lifts his chin to meet Lord Death’s stare with one of his own. “Please. If I may.”

Lord Death sighs a breath, part resignation and part relief, but still he asks: “Are you sure?” with his voice lower and more serious than Akane has ever heard it before.

Akane doesn’t blink. “I’m sure.”

Lord Death’s clap echoes, this time, catching into a rumble of sound so low Akane can feel it vibrate against his spine as it hums itself to silence in the air. “Well then! We’ll have to make plans accordingly. I assume the Curse hasn’t gone into effect yet?”

Akane shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Mm. Let myself or one of your professors know as soon as it does; I’ll let Spirit know that he’ll have to deal with it as soon as we start seeing any sign of it, and he can start working with Stein on the background research. I’ll look at some options for you for the summer, once it comes time for that again; we’ll sit down sometime in the spring to figure out how’d you like to spend your vacation: studying, researching, or lazing around.” His tone places all three options at an equal level, as if he sincerely doesn’t care which Akane chooses to pursue. “Consider the rest of the day yours to do with as you will. Classes will resume as usual tomorrow, but I hardly expect you’ll be in much of a state for studying today.”

Akane pushes to his feet. His legs are shakier than he realized; it’s difficult to keep himself upright as he ducks his head in a nod of understanding. “Yes sir. Thank you.”

Lord Death waves his hand. “Now, now, no need to thank me,” he chirps brightly. “Go distract yourself for a while, kids your age shouldn’t have to worry about these kinds of things. At least you can take the rest of the day to be a child again.”

Akane ducks his head in understanding and turns towards the door. He’s just reaching out for the handle when Lord Death says, “Please tell Mr. Sizemore he’s excused from classes for the rest of the day as well.” When Akane glances back Lord Death is watching him with that same focused expression, like his entire existence is centered on Akane’s face. “No point in trying to enforce rules you know won’t be followed!”

“Ah,” Akane says. “Yes. I will. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it!” Lord Death tells him, and waves him out the door and down the staircase to the main hallway.

Clay looks up as soon as Akane pushes open the door leading to the headmaster’s stairs. His hair is a mess, pushed up to tangle all around his face; Akane can see the prints of nervous fingers in the yellow locks, can see the stress written as clearly in Clay’s hair as in the crease at his forehead and the clumsy rush of his limbs as he pushes to his feet.

“Akane,” he blurts, speaking so quickly he nearly stutters the other’s name. “Are you okay?”

Akane should answer. Clay looks jittery with anxiety, like he’s spent the entire time since Akane’s letter disintegrated into ash on the table in front of them working himself into maximum panic; Akane ought to answer, ought to give reassurance right away. But he didn’t know Clay would be waiting for him, and he didn’t expect Clay to look so concerned on his behalf, and for just a moment all he can do is stand still and gaze at the other boy as if he’s never seen him before.

“Are you leaving?” Clay asks, his voice threatening to crack over the question mark in his throat. “You’re not leaving Hogwarts, are you Akane?” He’s twisting his hands together in front of him, his fingers pressing hard against his own wrists like he’s trying to hold himself still; his eyes are wide, and bright, and so liquid with emotion he looks like he might start crying at any time. “Do you have to leave school?”

There’s pressure in Akane’s throat, a knot lodged just behind his tongue that is catching his breathing rough in his chest. He still has memories looping in his head, the dark ones giving way to the light and back again, all the endless weight of what he’s giving up unfolding itself onto his shoulders with the burden of irrevocability; but he opens his mouth anyway, and forces air out of his lungs to manage a “No,” that comes out half-strangled but intelligible enough for his purposes. “I’m staying.”

Clay’s anxious hand-twisting stops, a little of the tension eases from his forehead; but he’s still looking at Akane with fear behind his eyes, like he thinks Akane might be a different person, or like he’s afraid Akane will think he’s someone else, like Akane might have listened to the vicious insults screamed to the entire Hall in his parents’ voices. “Oh,” he says, and swallows so hard Akane can see his throat work on the effort. “Can we still be friends?”

Akane wants to laugh. It _is_ laughter in his chest, bright and hysterical and sharp like broken glass when he takes a breath; but when he opens his mouth the sound comes out all wrong, turns inside-out into something far too close to a sob to even be mistaken for amusement. He can see Clay’s eyes go wide, can see tension give way to selfless concern for a moment before he ducks his head and lifts a sleeve over his face to cover the sudden damp at his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s smiling against his sleeve but his shoulders are starting to shake with hiccuping sobs he can’t even try to catch back. “We can still be friends.” And then his coherency melts away, leaving him to gasp through tears as his shaky knees finally collapse to drop him to the ground, and for several long minutes Akane isn’t thinking about anything but the choking sobs forcing their way out of his chest. There are hands at his shoulders, an arm catching around his waist, but he doesn’t think about that either; he just lets himself tip forward, lets his forehead land against the support of Clay’s shoulder and his arm come up around Clay’s neck, and when he sobs through the next wave of tears more soak into Clay’s robes than his own.

It’s a relief to have a shoulder to cry on.


	16. Match

Clay doesn’t remember what day it is when he wakes up. He’s too drowsy with the fading remnants of some gold-washed dream, too warm and comfortable under the three layers of blankets he’s nestled himself into; very, very distantly there’s a thought of classes, and the memory that he doesn’t have any today, and that’s enough to lull the weight of responsibility in his mind back to silence. He rolls over under his blankets, presses his face back down against the pillows like he can chase down the warmth of his dream again if he can just attain sleep; and then he shifts his leg across the bed, and his foot hit something, and curiosity does what restlessness couldn’t and pulls him to something like true alertness.

“What--?” Clay mumbles, trying to place the pattern of his surroundings as he turns over to squint blearily at the foot of his bed. There’s a shape at the blankets, the bright red of it glowing contrast to the gold of the drawn-back bed hangings, but Clay can’t make out the details of it for a moment, and then even once he can he can’t pull the images together into a whole. The red is throwing him off, he thinks, or maybe it’s the soft white layered around one end that is so confusing him; and then he sits up, and reaches out for the shape, and he realizes it’s a stocking at exactly the same moment his brain catches up with what day it is.

“Christmas!” Clay blurts, too-loud in the quiet of the dorm room; he can hear his voice catch echoes off the walls, the sound  loud enough to make him flinch instinctive apology. But the beds around him are as empty and still as they were when he went to sleep, as they have been for the last week since classes ended for the holidays and his housemates departed to their respective homes, and there’s no one here to grumble at Clay’s yelp of enthusiasm. He looks back to his unexpected stocking, to the curve of it weighted with unknown shapes, and he’s smiling all over his face as he pulls it into his lap so he can start rummaging through the objects within. There are some packages farther down, he can feel the weight of them pressing against his crossed legs, but at the top it’s all candy, mandarins and nuts and little bags of popcorn that profess to be _fireplace safe!_ in colorful enough letters that Clay doubts the sincerity of the claim. There’s chocolate too, bars that Clay recognizes from the store down the street from his parents’ home and some with names he’s never heard of before, and it’s when he’s drawing out the third bar that he thinks _Akane would like this_ and realizes that he’s still in his room alone.

The stocking is too-full when Clay tumbles everything more or less back inside; he has to hold it with both hands as he pads down the staircase to the warmly silent common room and makes for the dormitory door. There’s a bit of a struggle by the front -- he tries to shift the stocking to one arm and nearly drops the whole thing on his foot before he gives up the use of his hands and just leans against the portrait until it comes open -- and he’s just trying to figure out how on earth he’s going to climb out of the entrance without dropping everything all over the hallway floor when there’s a shift of movement from against the wall and Clay looks up to see Akane getting to his feet.  
“You’re here,” Clay blurts, excitement too warm and fizzing in his chest to allow him time to think over his words before he says them. “Merry Christmas!”

Akane looks up from under his hair, tipping his head to the side in the odd habit he’s picked up over the last few months that keeps his left eye cast into shadow; it’s still an novel motion, one Clay is as unaccustomed to as he is the shine of the glasses over Akane’s eyes, but the other’s smile is as familiar as ever, and the excitement in his eyes isn’t dimmed by the fact that Clay can only see one of them.

“Merry Christmas,” Akane says with minimally more composure than Clay offered. He nods towards Clay’s two-handed hold on his stocking and the lean he’s maintaining against the door. “Do you need a hand with that?”

“Ah, no, I’m fine,” Clay says, and as if on cue his stocking starts to wobble dangerously in his grip like it’s trying to break free of his hold entirely. “Come in, we can have the common room to ourselves.” Akane’s moving before Clay has finished the invitation, catching the edge of the portrait to hold it open so Clay can extricate himself from his lean and retreat into the room; Akane follows with far more elegance, even while balancing his own stocking carefully in the crook of his elbow.

“We could go back to Slytherin if you want,” Akane offers as they make for the fireplace and the soft of the two chairs drawn up close in front of it. With no older students to claim the best spots in front of the fire it’s become their preferred place to spend the evenings, with the firelight so close Clay imagines he can feel his face burning and Akane’s books are sometimes in danger from a particularly excitable spark from a collapsing log. “I think Black*Star was trying to arrange an indoor Quidditch match with Patty when I left.”

Clay briefly pictures the whizz of brooms swinging close overhead, imagines the boom of Black*Star’s yell echoing off the walls as he has heard it on the few occasions he sees the other in an enclosed space. He doesn’t know what face he makes, but it’s apparently enough of an answer for Akane to laugh and take the lead for the chair on what is becoming his side of the fireplace.

“That’s what I thought too,” he says, balancing his stocking against the leg of the chair so he can climb onto the overlarge cushion and bring his feet up under him. Clay’s seen two people fit in one of the chairs before -- first-year girls with the clingy closeness of best friends, or older couples wound inextricably around each other in the first flush of romance. For just one person the furniture is enormous, almost wide enough to serve as a couch more than a chair, and Akane has a demonstrated tendency to fold himself up over the cushion so he can lean sideways against the arm as he’s doing now. He’s still smiling as he watches Clay sprawl across the comfort of the other chair, his head braced against his hand so his hair falls into a curtain across his face to shadow over the shine of his glasses. “I thought it would be safer to just come over and wait for you to get up than to stay.”

“Everyone’s going to die,” Clay says, a little awed even now by this unprecedented recklessness on Black*Star’s part.

“Yes,” Akane agrees. “And I’m pretty sure Maka’s going to be the one to kill them when someone crash-lands into her new book.” Clay winces in sympathetic pain for whoever the unlucky party ends up being and Akane laughs again before nodding in the direction of Clay’s stocking. “What did you get?”

“Oh,” Clay says, and looks down to the weight of the burden he still has cradled in both arms. “I don’t know. I wanted to wait to meet up with you.”

“I’m here now,” Akane points out, still smiling from the other side of the fireplace. “If you don’t unpack that soon it looks like it’s going to explode on you.”

“Yeah,” Clay agrees. “You too, okay?”

“Alright,” Akane agrees, leaning over to reach for his own stocking, and Clay turns his attention down to resume his half-begun process of emptying everything from the weight of the makeshift package in his lap. The room goes quiet for the next few minutes, with nothing but the sound of the fire crackling and the rustle of paper and ribbon as both of them make it to the presents stacked in the bottom of their stockings. Clay half-peels one of the mandarins so he can eat slices out of it as he considers the labels on his gifts with sticky fingers; there’s one from Akane, of course, and a pair of boxes tied together with ribbon that profess to be from _Soul and Maka_ in such tidy handwriting that Clay is sure he knows who actually did the shopping and the wrapping both. There’s a small bag from Black*Star, and a box the size of Clay’s hand from his roommate Jaime, and three presents in plain paper marked over with the all-caps printing Clay recognizes as his dad’s without needing to see the label of _For our son_ that gives away the identity of the givers as clearly.

He starts with the gift bag from Black*Star, half-expecting an autographed napkin or something similar; but there’s a picture inside instead, a magical snapshot from the last Slytherin Qudditch match with, yes, Black*Star in the center laughing uproariously if silently, but also their usual quartet on the bleachers behind him, Soul grinning and Maka huffing silent judgment and Akane and Clay pressed close against each other just past the bright blue of Black*Star’s hair. Clay can see the tiny image of himself laughing as the wind catches to ruffle the weight of his gold-and-black scarf around his neck, can see Akane beside him with his head turned to watch Clay instead of Black*Star in front of them. The picture is from early in the school year, just after Akane started wearing glasses to correct his curse-blurred vision and sweeping his hair over the star pattern printed indelibly across his left eye; Clay can tell from the self-conscious dip to Akane’s chin and the way his shoulders are hunched like he’s half-expecting a blow or a shout. But he’s smiling as he watches Clay, his expression as soft as it used to be all the time before he started hiding half his face, and something in Clay’s chest tightens as the image of himself glances sideways to laugh happiness to Akane alongside him, as the soft of Akane’s photographed smile goes brighter as if with the sunrise breaking over his face. Clay can feel his cheeks going warm, can feel himself coloring as if it’s someone else he’s looking at, as if he’s interrupting something instead of watching a saved image of a moment he lived through himself; and then Akane says “Oh” in such a shocked-breathless tone that Clay’s attention is jolted up and away from the picture entirely.

Clay recognizes the shape in Akane’s hands as soon as he sees it. He should; after all, it’s the scarf he picked out himself a month ago during a semi-secret shopping trip with Soul and Maka while Akane was getting over a cold. It looks more blue here than it did in the store, like it’s gathering color from the yellows and blacks of the surroundings and shining the brighter in comparison.

“Ah,” Clay says, startled into speech before he can think. “Yeah. Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you,” Akane says without looking up, his fingers working over the soft of the fabric in his hands. Clay knows how soft it is -- he ran the length of the scarf through his hands the whole way back from shopping, like he was trying to memorize the pleasant give of the fabric under his fingers -- but it’s still funny to see Akane working through the same motions now, like he’s trying and failing to find a segment along the length of the cloth that isn’t so soft it feels almost damp to the touch. Clay watches Akane’s forehead crease, watches his mouth work on some restrained expression; then, around the beginnings of a laugh: “You _do_ know what house I’m in, don’t you?”

It takes Clay a minute to catch up. “What?” he says; and then, as Akane looks up to smirk amusement at him: “ _Oh_ ” as his cheeks start to go hot with self-consciousness. “Of course I--it’s not for your _house_.”

Akane’s grin pulls wider as he leans back against the support of the chair back behind him, his presents and the torn-open wrapping from them laid around him like the makings of some highly unusual nest. “No?”

“No,” Clay protests, ducking his chin as he frowns with the attempt to fit words to the logic in his head at the time he saw the scarf from across the shop, to the sense of _Akane_ that flashed into his mind as fully-formed as if it had just been waiting to be discovered. “They had one in green too, and one in yellow. But that one…” He frowns harder, struggling with the words he wants. “It just made me think of you.”

“Really,” Akane says, laughter audible in his voice even if Clay isn’t looking at his face.

“Yeah,” Clay says, and then, as something clicks into place in his mind, as some connection unveils itself in response to his effort: “It’s the same color as your eyes,” all in a rush, before he has time to think about what he’s saying. He hears the words as they fall from his lips, feels his cheeks starting to burn into self-consciousness, and it’s then that he looks up and sees the way Akane is looking at him.

Clay was expecting laughter. Akane’s been on the verge of it since he opened his present; it’s the least Clay anticipates, to be met with the sparkle of entertainment in Akane’s gaze and the twist of a smirk at his mouth. But Akane’s mouth is soft, his eyes wide and startled as if Clay has just delivered some earth-shattering pronouncement, and for a moment they’re just staring at each other from across the gap between their chairs, Akane’s hands stalled to stillness against the soft of the scarf and Clay with his cheeks slowly heating to a color unrelated to the warmth of the fire next to him. Clay can’t explain why his heart is pounding so hard in his chest, can’t reason through the tremor of adrenaline running along his spine and out into his fingers; all he knows for sure is that he’s feeling both, that his breathing is catching to overtime in his throat and his hands are starting to shake very slightly against the edges of the picture frame he still has in his hold. Akane’s still staring at him, his expression still utterly blank of anything except for surprise; his hands tighten on the scarf for a moment, his fingers digging hard into the fabric, and then suddenly he’s looking away, ducking his head like he’s trying to hide his whole expression behind his hair and not just his left eye. Clay has a brief impression of spreading red, of lips quivering on some kind of unspecified emotion, and then Akane tips his head down even farther, so all Clay can see of him is the dark curtain of the hair Akane has left to grow out long over the last few months.

“Ah,” Akane says to his lap, his voice strange and strained in his throat. “Yes.” He coughs, clearing his throat with more force than subtlety, and Clay hasn’t looked away but he thinks his whole face is scarlet, now, is fairly sure he’s approximating the color of a lobster the longer the moment stretches taut with strange awkwardness. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Clay says. He barely recognizes his own voice for how strained it comes out, but at least the reply is enough to break him out of whatever strange daze he was locked into. He looks down at his lap, grabs at one of the items around him at random just for the sake of something else to talk about to ease the thrumming strain in the air. “Did you get any of these popcorn packets?”  
Akane did, as it turns out, and more he knows how to use them, which is apparently to toss them in the general direction of the fireplace before taking cover behind the nearest furniture and hoping that nothing you’re wearing is particular flammable. The explosions go off like gunshots and make Clay jump, and that makes Akane laugh, and by the time the _bangs_ stop the popcorn has started in on the second phase, which is to float through the air until it collects around their heads and shoulders to be plucked from the space and eaten piece by piece. The first packet comes out red and tastes like candy apples; Akane insists on picking the packet after that, which turns out to be bright yellow with a distinct suggestion of persimmon under the flavor. It makes Clay laugh and Akane smile, and between them they work through four of the packets of popcorn before they’re too full to do anything but leave the last (blue raspberry flavored, Clay thinks) to hover hopefully around their heads while Akane pages through the book Maka gifted him and Clay opens the pair of mittens and the rolled-up poster of his favorite movie his parents sent him to go along with the book on mythology from Akane. There’s a letter from them too, a long, rambling thing with stories about their neighbors and plenty of holiday wishes for both Clay and his friends, with Akane mentioned by name. Clay reads through it while Akane is lost in his own book, but he thinks he’ll have to make another pass if he really wants to remember any of the details; he keeps catching a glimpse of blue out of the corner of his eyes, his attention keeps dragging up and sideways to catch at the scarf Akane has wrapped around his neck in spite of the ambient warmth of the room.

Clay’s glad to be proven right. It really _does_ match the color of Akane’s eyes.


	17. Friends

“I’m just saying,” Soul drawls from one of the couches set along the far side of the Slytherin common room. “We _could_ hang out with the Gryffindors if you weren’t such a prejudiced jerk about it.”

“I am _not_ prejudiced,” Maka snaps from the chair she’s taken next to Soul’s space-filling sprawl. “It’s more comfortable here.”

“It’s more comfortable for _you_.” Soul doesn’t sound particularly irritated; he makes it sound like he’s stating a fact more than picking a fight. “And for Akane. Clay and I have to walk over here to meet you guys, it’s not fair that we always have to do all the work just because there are two of you here.”

“Don’t use Clay to argue your point,” Maka protests. “He’d have to walk to the Gryffindor common room the same as to ours.”

“We meet at Hufflepuff a lot too,” Akane puts in from where he and Clay are sitting over the board of a half-played game of wizard chess neither of them have the motivation to pursue any further. “It’s about even, I think.”

“Maybe more over there,” Clay agrees. “At least when we’re trying to study.”

Akane laughs. “It _is_ quieter.”

“That’s not the point,” Maka huffs. “The _point_ is I am _not_ prejudiced.”

“You are,” Soul resists, and Akane lets his attention slide away from the low murmur of their constant bickering and back to the idle combat the pieces on the chessboard are acting through. His rook is in a stalemate with one of Clay’s knights; Clay’s king and queen have their heads ducked together to whisper in voices too soft to hear anything but a low hum, and Akane’s knights are in the middle of trading uniforms and laughing uproariously to the applause of a gaggle of pawns of both colors.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop fighting?” Clay asks from the other side of the chessboard. He’s smiling when Akane looks up at him, his head turned to make it clear he’s talking about their friends and not the chess pieces.

“Nah,” Akane says without bothering to look over at the continuing argument. It’s more pleasant to watch Clay instead, to see the amusement in his eyes and the soft of the smile at his mouth as he watches Soul and Maka snap at each other. “They’ll be lucky if they manage to go their whole wedding ceremony without setting each other off.”

Clay looks back to Akane, his eyes going wider on surprise. “Their…?”

“He’s definitely got a thing for her,” Akane says, ducking his head and speaking softly so Soul and Maka won’t notice that they’re the subject of conversation. “And I think she’s had a crush since before they started school. That’s why she’s so irritated he went and got himself Sorted into Gryffindor.”

Clay’s laugh comes bright on surprise from across the span of the table. “That’s silly,” he says, and when Akane looks up Clay’s watching him instead of the pieces, giving Akane the full focus of his attention the way he does whenever he’s really dedicating himself to a single subject. “We’re in different houses but that doesn’t stop us from being friends.”

There’s a thrill down Akane’s spine, a flicker of something that might be adrenaline, might be a suspicion of hope at the probably-inadvertent parallel Clay has just drawn. He only lets it settle for a moment; then he smiles back across the table and says “Yeah,” in a tone that is almost completely ordinary in spite of the warm glow in his veins. “I think Maka just likes to fight.”

Clay laughs again, his whole face lighting up with unselfconscious happiness. “Yeah,” he says, and Akane ducks his head to gaze unseeing at the movement of the chessboard again as Clay looks back to the continuing argument happening next to them. There’s a beat of silence, just enough time to put a period on the last subject of conversation; and then Clay says, “What are you doing for the summer?” with the odd tension on his voice that always appears when he mentions Akane’s family situation even obliquely.

Akane looks back up. Clay’s not watching him; he’s staring at the chessboard instead, his mouth drawing down into an unconscious frown even though the pair of knights are now doing acrobatics off each other’s shoulders. There’s a lock of pale hair falling over his forehead and in front of his eyes; he reaches up to push it back but it falls forward again as soon as he lets it go.

“I’m staying here,” Akane says without looking away from Clay’s face. “Lord Death is letting me keep my dorm room through the summer break.” He huffs a laugh. “I’ll have plenty of help with my homework if I need it, I guess.”

“Do you want to come to visit?” Clay asks. He reaches out to pick up one of the pawns; the piece squeaks surprise at being lifted into the air and Clay makes a face of apology and sets it down with more care than he raised it. “My parents said last summer that you could come over to visit if you want. For a couple days, or a week or something, and if you don’t have anything else to do it would be nice to see you.” He’s starting to blush; Akane can see the color spreading out across his cheekbones to stain his skin to pink like a sunburn come early. “I mean, I’m Muggleborn, so my house isn’t magical at all. It might be really boring. I understand if you want to stay here instead.”

“Yeah,” Akane says. “I mean no. I’d like to visit, as long as it’s not a problem.”

Clay looks up from the chessboard, his hands stilling from their nervous fretting. “No. Yeah. It’s not. My parents want to meet you. Will you really?”

“Sure,” Akane says, and Clay is starting to grin, his eyes going wider and brighter as if Akane’s promising him Christmas in July, as if maybe Akane coming to visit is even better than Christmas would be. “Anytime you want me. I’ll be stuck here with Maka and Black*Star all summer, it’d be awesome to come and see you.”

“Oh,” Clay says, and his smile really does break wide over his face then, going so bright and warm Akane can see the glow of green behind the blue of his eyes. “Cool. Yeah. Good. I’ll tell my parents and write to you once they say yes.”

“Are you sure they will?” Akane asks, but he’s smiling too wide for his question to sound at all sincere, the expression breaking more easily across his face than it ever does, now, except when Clay’s around. “Maybe they don’t want me over now that I’m an outcast from proper wizarding society.”

“You’re not,” Clay says, more intensely than Akane expected. He ducks his head again, letting the stray lock of hair fall over his features once more; Akane blinks, his laughter startled away by the unswerving certainty in Clay’s voice. “You’re not an outcast.” He reaches out to nudge at one of the chess pieces again, his fingers catching at the polished surface of the stone; his mouth is tensing, setting itself into the rare stubbornness that Akane has learned better than to try to resist. “You’re my friend.”

It’s a trivial statement. It’s hardly as if Akane didn’t know that before, not as if that fact hasn’t already been the greatest source of comfort to him over the last months as his curse-blurred vision has stabilized and the star marking his left eye has become a matter of course instead of a constant curiosity to his classmates. But there’s still a flutter in his chest, a shudder of electricity out into his veins, and when he exhales it comes out in a rush, as a spill of a laugh more warm than amused.

“Yeah,” Akane says, and when Clay looks up he meets the other’s gaze, lets the lopsided angle of his own smile tug Clay’s expression into answering happiness. “I am.”

Akane thinks he could accept rejection from far more than his immediate family in exchange for Clay smiling at him like that.


	18. Sincere

Akane arrives at the beginning of August. Clay wrote the first week he got home to offer an invitation anytime Akane wanted to use it, but it took a week to get a reply, and then Akane had been hesitant about accepting, demurring back and forth in a way that took some weeks just to get past. But Clay kept insisting, eventually writing a letter that included an invitation to visit in every paragraph of text, and that finally did what it was intended to do and brought Akane to his front step with a bag over his shoulder and his hair over his eyes. He was tense at first -- Clay could see it in the hunch of his shoulders and the way he wasn’t meeting anyone’s gaze directly, even Clay’s -- but a cup of tea and a few hours of conversation undid most of the uncharacteristic awkwardness clinging to Akane’s responses, and by the end of the first week he’s back to smiling and easy conversation, even if he keeps his hair falling over his face in a way that Clay’s mother always frowns over.

It’s the best summer Clay’s ever had. They have weeks before school starts again, but Akane turns out to have brought his textbooks with him, charmed with a temporary shrinking spell to let them fit into an outside pocket of his bag until he says the word to release the enchantment, and with his textbooks and the whole array of Clay’s closet to rummage through for clothes Clay doesn’t see any reason for Akane to return to the castle before the beginning of the school year. Akane makes mention of it halfway through his second week, something off-hand over breakfast about being an imposition, and Clay has only just opened his mouth to respond when his mother says “You’re not,” fast and sincere, and his father follows up with “We’re glad to have you here to keep Clay occupied” with a smile to go along with the statement. Akane was left to blink shock at them for a moment, his mouth still half-open on whatever second half of his statement was yet to be voiced; and then he shut his mouth and ducked his head into a smile warm enough that Clay could see it even behind the curtain of his hair.

So he stays. It’s nice to have the company and better that it’s Akane; everything is more entertaining with the other boy for conversation. They end up taking over the grocery shopping from Clay’s father once Clay figures out how much fun wandering through Muggle shops is when he has Akane with him; it always takes them an hour or more, even if they’re just trying to buy a loaf of bread, but the entertainment it gives is enough to keep Akane grinning for hours afterwards, and even as his smiles become more common and his laughter becomes a regular part of mealtimes Clay is always more than willing to spend the time to win a little more of it. Akane just unwinds more and more as the summer progresses; by the time September is threatening on the calendar, Clay’s not even all that shocked when the other boy emerges from the bathroom with his hair pulled back from his face into a tiny ponytail. Akane flushes when Clay gapes at him, ducks his head like he’s thinking about tugging the hairtie free completely; but then Clay’s mother comes into the room, and says “Nice change,” with almost bored honesty in her voice, and that’s entirely the end of it. The ponytail leaves Akane’s face completely bare for the light, and even the weight of his glasses isn’t enough to more than blur the outline of the star clear across one eye; but Clay’s parents don’t mention it, and Clay doesn’t say anything, and if the ponytail is all but falling out by the end of the day the next morning Akane does it again, still without saying anything, and after that it’s a regular occurrence.

It’s strange for Clay to realize, as the calendar tips over the edge into the new month and starts to count down the days to school, that he’s not looking forward to going back to classes. He’s excited to see the castle again, sure, and there’s a handful of housemates and friends he’s missed over the summer; it will be good to see Maka again, and Soul, and even Black*Star, as long as Clay can find some earplugs to get him through the first exuberant welcome the other boy will offer. But there’s something pleasant about having Akane all to himself every day, about being able to spend the whole of the mornings and afternoons with the other boy instead of just those class periods they happen to have together, and the closer the return to school comes the harder it is for Clay to sleep for fretting over the worries rising in the back of his thoughts.

He’s taking his turn on the floor tonight -- his bed is too narrow to even consider sharing, and after a very brief consideration of splitting up so one could sleep on the couch he and Akane agreed that switching off sleeping on the floor in the same room is better than no late-night conversation at all -- and Akane’s been so quiet that Clay thinks he’s asleep and probably has been for the last half-hour. It’s not until Clay rolls over for the fifth time in ten minutes in a futile attempt to get comfortable and Akane says, “Can’t sleep?” that he realizes he’s not, and then only with a jerk of surprise at the sudden sound of the other’s voice.

“Oh,” he blurts, shock winning out to drag the sound from his throat before he can think up a more coherent response. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah.” Akane shifts on the bed to turn over and slide closer to the edge; when Clay looks up the other boy is looking down at him, his head pillowed on his arm and his eyes very dark in the minimal illumination offered through the open window. “Is it too warm?”

“No.” It _is_ warm -- even with the window pushed up and the door cracked open to let the suggestion of a breeze curl through the room, Clay is sure he would be perfectly comfortable in just the pajama pants and t-shirt he has on without any need for the blanket tangled around his legs. But he thinks he’d be able to sleep even if it were far warmer, if he could only get his thoughts to go calm and quiet like the night outside. “I can’t stop thinking.”

“About school?”

“Yeah.” Clay angles his arm under his head to give himself more steady support than the soft of his pillow and tips his head so he can look up and meet Akane’s steady gaze. “It’s going to be weird to be back in classes.”

“It’ll be nice to have something to do.”

“I guess so.” Clay frowns, trying to find words to encompass the weird ache that’s pressing against the inside of his chest. “I’m going to miss you.”

Akane’s laugh is muffled, caught by the cover of his hand as much as by the deliberate softness of the sound in the back of his throat. “You _do_ know I’m going back to school with you, right?”

“I know!” Clay can feel his cheeks flush with heat like a much-delayed sunburn even before he turns sideways to hide against his arm. “Shut up, Akane, I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m sorry,” Akane says, sounding not very sorry at all and a lot more like he’s still on the verge of dissolving into another giggle, but then he takes a breath, and coughs his voice back to clarity, and says “I know what you meant,” in a voice so low that Clay’s self-consciousness eases even before he tips his head to risk a glance up at the other boy. Akane’s still lying across Clay’s bed, still has his head pillowed on his arm; but he’s staring out at the far wall, now, his gaze going hazy and unfocused at whatever he’s seeing in his head instead of the edge of the poster Clay has pinned up over his desk. “It’s going to be weird not having you to talk to at night.”

“Yeah.” Clay turns back down against his arm and huffs a breath against the soft of his pillow. “I’m glad you came to visit.”

“I am too.” Akane shifts against the bed but Clay doesn’t look up to see him; his cheeks are still warm with his blush and he doesn’t trust himself to retain his composure if Akane starts laughing again. “Thanks for having me over.” There’s the rustle of blankets, the sound of Akane taking a breath; and then ghosting contact, the drag of fingertips against the very back of Clay’s neck. Clay jumps at the sensation, turns his head up to stare at Akane, but Akane doesn’t pull away; his hand slides down, catches against the back of Clay’s collar, and then steadies into the weight of his palm against the other’s shoulder. He still has his head resting against his arm, his chin tipped down so his hair is threatening to fall in front of his face; but it hasn’t yet, Clay can still see Akane’s eyes and even the faint outline of the pale star over the left if he looks for it. Clay’s shoulder is warm under the weight of Akane’s touch, his skin prickling like there’s static running over him looking for a grounding-out point; for a minute he’s too startled-still to think to speak, much less move. But Akane doesn’t pull away, and doesn’t turn his head, and finally Clay can take a breath and steady himself enough to make an attempt at speech.

“I’m glad you’re my friend” he says, and then he reaches up all at once, before he can think the better of it, to catch his fingers against the weight of Akane’s hair and push it back from his face. Akane’s eyes widen by a fraction, his expression going slack with surprise, and Clay presses the fall of the other’s hair back behind his ear with clumsy haste before drawing his hand away as his whole face starts to burn with self-consciousness. Akane blinks, and Clay turns his head down against his arm again and tries to catch his breath back from the rush of inexplicable adrenaline that is rushing out into him, that is tensing his fingers hard against his palm.

There’s a pause, a moment of quiet with nothing but the rush of Clay’s breathing in his ears as backdrop for the faint weight of Akane’s fingers still barely touching his shoulder. When Akane takes a breath it sounds very loud in the quiet, Clay can feel it like a shock all up his spine; but when he speaks it’s softer than anything he’s said before, so quiet Clay can barely hear it over the pounding of his heart in his chest.

“Thank you,” he says, and his hand presses harder at Clay’s shoulder for a moment, underlining the soft of the words with the warmth of the contact. Then he pulls away, and shifts on the bed, and when Clay glances back up Akane’s turned face-down against the pillow and all he can see of the other is the dark weight of his hair.

Clay’s pretty sure Akane’s blushing as badly as he is, but he doesn’t try to look to make sure.


	19. Orbit

Akane loses Clay at the entrance to the joke shop.

It’s hard to realize for a moment. The shop is as overwhelming as it has always been on those occasions Akane has been able to get Soul or Black*Star to accompany him while Clay was absorbed in petting the Kneazles at the menagerie; it’s one of the most popular stores for the students to visit, which means the crowd alone is dense enough to make it easy to misplace even Clay’s height and bright hair. But it’s also utterly cacophonous, between the chatter of conversations and bursts of laughter of the students as well as the _bang_ of Fingertip Firecrackers going off and the flutter of movement by the ceiling as the latest batch of Aerial Assortments take wing to perch in the rafters overhead. Akane is almost halfway to his goal when he realizes Clay is absent, and then he has to backtrack his way through the crowd and the noise and the occasional puffs of smoke only to find Clay barely inside the door of the shop at all and gazing wide-eyed at the cooing candies nestled by the ceiling.

“Clay,” Akane calls as he gets close enough, but Clay can’t hear him or isn’t listening; Akane has to step in right against the other’s shoulder and grab at his sleeve before he gets Clay’s attention, and then it’s in a rush, Clay looking down to blink wide-eyed shock at Akane’s face like he’s forgotten they came here together. “This way, come on.”

“Okay,” Clay says, although the words are lost to hearing; all Akane can make of them is the duck of Clay’s head into an obedient nod and the shape of his lips around the word, but it’s enough for agreement. Akane turns back around to head through the crowd, keeping his hold on Clay’s sleeve as he goes to make sure the other is still moving; this works well for the first few feet, but then an overexcited third-year pushes her way between them to beeline for the display of Dungbombs in the corner and Akane’s hold is knocked loose for a moment before he can look back and reach out for Clay again. Clay’s stretching for him, too, looking as alarmed by the prospect of separation as if the crowd is a wave likely to sweep him away without the support of Akane’s arm, and when Akane’s touch lands at Clay’s wrist Clay turns his hand immediately to interlock their fingers into a steadier hold. Akane can feel the heat of Clay’s palm pressed close against his run all the way up his shoulder and down his spine, as if Clay is holding one of the pocket-sized Coat Cinders sold at the front of the store for cold days, but there’s nothing between them but the friction of slightly damp skin and the grip of Clay’s fingers tightening around Akane’s hand. Akane looks away as Clay catches up with him through the press of the crowd, lets his hair fall over his face as he says “Right there,” with a gesture he knows will be unintelligible in the busy rush of the crowd; it’s more for the sake of letting off some of the strange nervous energy in him than for Clay to follow what he means anyway, the same way the shadow of his hair over his face is more to cover the heat under his skin than the star-shaped mark in his eye.

It’s quieter in the corner of the shop. The real press of enthusiasm is around the brightest displays at the front, the toys that explode or light up or do something more immediately exciting than the ones back here, where the candy quills and sour notepaper are kept. Clay can step in closer now, and does, as if he’s afraid of losing Akane again even with the greatly lessened press of the crowd; it makes Akane’s skin prickle, makes him glad all over again that he went back to leaving his hair down at school, and then he sees what he was looking for like a breath of relief.

“Here they are.” He draws his hand free of Clay’s, easing his grip and sliding his fingers loose in the same movement; Clay’s hold tightens for a moment, like he’s trying to stall Akane’s motion, and then their hands slide apart and away. Akane’s skin feels colder without Clay’s pressed against it. He drops down to kneel in front of a display of bouquets, the labels small and half-hidden even when he’s on eye-level with them, and reaches to draw one free, a cluster of blue flowers touched with the same green tinge as Clay’s eyes. When he looks back Clay is just dropping to the ground himself, far more cautiously than Akane did, and he’s eying the bouquet like it might grow teeth and bite him if he’s not careful around it. It’s not an unreasonable concern, Akane supposes, but it’s still enough to make him grin as he offers the bunch of flowers to Clay. “Smell them.”

Clay doesn’t reach for the flowers. He frowns at them instead, leaning back from the curve of the blossoms as if he’s expecting the worst. “Is this going to explode in my face or something?”

“No,” Akane says, but Clay still gives him a look layered with the skepticism only the naturally gullible ever learn to develop. “Some stuff in here would, yeah. This won’t.”

Clay’s still looking doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Akane holds Clay’s gaze with as much sincerity as he can muster. “Would I give you something bad, Clay?”

Clay’s expression eases. “Guess not,” he admits, and reaches out to take the bouquet. His touch is still ginger against the leaves; even once he’s taken it he holds it back from his face, hesitating a moment before he moves. “You’re not teasing me, Akane?”

“I’m not teasing you,” Akane promises. “It’s nice, really.”

Clay’s forehead is still creased, his mouth still drawing down into a frown; but “Okay,” he says, the uncertainty in his tone saying _I’m trusting you_ better than words would, and then he looks back to the flowers and takes a breath like he’s bracing himself. He hesitates for another moment; and then he leans in all at once to press his face against the blossoms in his hands.

The effect is immediate. Akane can see the light burst out from between Clay’s fingers, can see the flowers melting away under his touch even as Clay yelps at the flash of illumination and jerks back. The light clings to his hair, hovering around his head like an adopted halo, and Akane is grinning wide even before the first rush of shock has faded from Clay’s features.

“What--” Clay starts, reaching up with now-empty hands to try to touch the light hovering around his hair. The glow of it coalesces as Akane watches, like it’s collecting into points under the urging of Clay’s fingertips, and then, just as Clay is starting to frown confusion, it bursts out into rays of light, the pinpoints spreading out to fill all the space around his head with asymmetrical illumination. Clay startles again, nearly falling backwards as the light shifts, and Akane laughs without meaning to.

“Astrological Asters,” he says, as Clay blinks himself into focus on the array of stars hovering around him, on the slow-spinning shape of Capricorn outlined in feather-light lines between the points of light orbiting his head. “They turn into the constellation you were born under when you smell them.”

“Oh,” Clay says, his voice breathless on that shocked-open surprise he always gets when he sees some new piece of magic. He reaches up like he’s trying to catch the points of light in his fingers, his whole expression gone soft on delighted surprise, and this is what Akane wanted to see, this wide-eyed joy that Clay gets sometimes like he’s still a kid seeing magic for the first time, with the light in his eyes that makes all the things Akane takes for granted in his life seem new and bright just by virtue of Clay’s appreciation. “This is amazing.” His fingers skim one of the stars, slide right through the unresisting light; and the constellation twists faster, dipping into a faster orbit as if Clay’s touch has pushed it into motion. Clay’s eyes light up, his mouth curves up onto a smile; and then he laughs, warm and startled and delighted, and Akane can feel his whole world veer as sharply as the constellation gently drifting around Clay’s head. His own smile melts away, his focus giving way to a huff of air as his heart constricts on warmth, and it’s affection in his mind and it’s appreciation in his eyes but it’s something else in his chest, something so tight and aching that it’s almost painful, like it’s too much of a weight to bear or like something too big has tried to squeeze itself into the gaps between his ribs. He takes an inhale, sharp and hissing against the pressure; and Clay blinks away from the constellation, and looks at Akane, and the warm happiness in his expression dissolves into sudden concern as the light around his head starts to collect itself back into the shape of flowers.

“Akane?” Clay asks. The light fades out, the flowers gather themselves back into a bouquet before they drift gently to the ground, but Clay isn’t looking at the blossoms at all; he’s staring at Akane, his eyes wide on concern and his mouth gone soft with worry. “Are you okay?”

Akane blinks. “I’m fine,” he says automatically, without thinking about the words or how true they may actually be. He feels a little bit dizzy still, as if his sense of balance was careening along with the stars floating around Clay’s head, and it’s still hard to breathe, but most of all he wants to duck his head, wants to hide his face behind the curtain of his hair as he almost never does with Clay, as he just did moments before. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You look really flushed,” Clay says, and his hand touches Akane’s shoulder, and Akane has to shut his eyes for a minute as his heart tries to skid itself out-of-rhythm in his chest. “Is it too warm?”

“Yeah,” Akane says, because it’s not, and he knows the crowd’s not the problem, but it’s an easy excuse for the color he can feel burning all across his cheeks and prickling electricity over his skin from that point of contact at his shoulder. “Sorry.” He opens his eyes again, focuses on the dropped bouquet with aggressive intensity as he reaches to pick it back up and replace it in the display rack. “I think I just need a minute of fresh air.”

“Okay,” Clay says, and he’s moving all at once, getting to his feet in the overenthusiastic rush that he always shows when Akane gives him the solution to a problem. “I’ll take you outside.” He takes Akane’s elbow as soon as the other is halfway to his feet, bracing his hold against the other’s arm with far more support than Akane really needs as they maneuver back out through the crowd courtesy of Clay’s insistent requests for space, and he doesn’t let go when they get out onto the main street or all the way to the ice cream shop that Akane suggests they pause at. It’s not until Akane is sitting at one of the outdoor tables that Clay lets him go, and then it’s only to fuss over him until Akane gives him a handful of coins and tells him to go buy them ice cream. Clay is quick to obey this new command, and his brief absence gives Akane the time he needs to catch his breath, and ease the rush of his pulse in his throat, and calm himself down before Clay returns with the most elaborate ice cream cone Akane has ever seen, topped with no less than all three of Akane’s favorite flavors at once.

“I didn’t know which one you’d like best,” Clay tells him, sounding as out-of-breath as if he’s been running. “Sorry, I should have asked before I left.”

“No,” Akane says, and reaches out to take the cone from Clay’s grip. “This is perfect, thank you.” Clay beams down at him, smiling as if Akane has just told him he passed all his classes with top marks, and Akane’s heart aches with that pressure again, with the threat of self-consciousness that nearly claims him again before he can push it off and turn his attention to his ice cream. He manages to talk Clay into eating almost an entire scoop himself by the time they are done, and when they get up to go Akane feels very nearly himself again, in spite of the continuing pressure thrumming against his ribcage with every beat of his heart. He thinks he might just have to get used to that, anyway; it’s not like the revelation is particularly startling.

Akane’s pretty sure he’s been in love with his best friend for a while, after all.


	20. Answer

“Gemini.”

Clay squints at the sky overhead without really seeing it, his attention lost in sorting through old conversations with Akane and hours of flashcard drills for the shape of the constellation in question. He can remember a story about twins, can remember the shape is almost mirrored over itself down the middle; finally he reaches an arm out to drag out over the cluster of stars low against the horizon. “There?”

“If you keep squinting like that you’re going to need glasses too,” Akane tells him. Clay can hear the smile on his voice without turning his head to actually see the bright edge of it. “That’s the one. You always sound so unsure, Clay.”

“I _am_ unsure.” Clay lets his arm drop and heaves a sigh of relief. “Half the time I remember them wrong even after you drill me on them.”

“It’s not half,” Akane tells him. “You only missed one so far tonight.”

Clay frowns at the sky. “Yeah, and you haven’t missed any.”

“I haven’t had my next turn yet.” Akane sounds unconcerned; when Clay glances at him the other boy has his head tipped to watch Clay’s face instead of the sky, still has the dip of a smile clinging to his mouth. His hair is falling off his face to leave the star mark obscuring his left eye clear, but Akane doesn’t move to cover it. “Maybe I’ll get this one wrong.”

Clay rolls his eyes. “Sure,” he says, and looks back up to pick a constellation out from the array of stars overhead. “The only way you’ll miss it is if you do it on purpose, and that doesn’t count.” Akane laughs, the sound soft in the back of his throat, and Clay can’t keep the tug of a smile off his mouth as he settles on a pattern from the myriad options overhead.

“That one,” he says, lifting a hand to gesture to the angled hook of a constellation across the sky from his own, the bright points of light glowing sharp against the backdrop of the night. “See it?”

Akane shifts alongside him. “Sorry, which one?”

“You weren’t even looking,” Clay says, and gestures again, carefully. “That one.”

“Okay,” Akane says. “I see it.” There’s a pause, a moment while he considers; then “Aries,” with barely an upswing at the end to make it a question.

“Yep,” Clay says, and lets his hand fall over his stomach again. “Told you.”

“You gave me an easy one,” Akane protests, rocking his head to the side to bump against Clay’s. “It’s not studying if it’s a giveaway.”

“It’s still part of the Zodiac,” Clay tells him. “Your turn.”

Akane huffs. “Orion.”

“Come _on_ ,” Clay groans. “That’s the easiest one there is, that’s not even a question.”

“I get to pick the ones for you to find,” Akane tells him. “Orion.”

Clay very nearly points at a constellation at random, just for the sake of argument. But Akane shifts and turns his head to grin at him again, and finally Clay contents himself with a gusty sigh and a swing of his hand towards the familiar patterns overhead. “There.”

“Got it in one,” Akane purrs at him. Clay cuts his eyes sideways only to see Akane’s smile flashing bright in the faint glow of the starlight overhead. “You’re really good at this.”

“Shut up,” Clay says, and reaches out to push an elbow against Akane’s ribs. Akane flinches back from the impact, giggling amusement at Clay’s reaction, and Clay has to look up and away as his expression breaks into a smile in spite of his best attempt to hold to irritation. “Okay. For real, this time.”

“Mm.” Akane settles back into place against the floor of the Astronomy Tower, straightening his shoulders alongside Clay’s again before he tips his head to watch the other once more. “Go ahead.”

“Are you paying attention this time?” Clay asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. He knows the constellation he wants, his eyes are drawn to the shape of it framed directly overhead by the columns marking out the edge of the Tower. When he lifts his hand the line of his arm falls into strange perspective with his fingers, making them seem as far away as the stars for a moment. “That one.” He keeps his hand up for a moment, feeling his fingers tingle with the beginnings of numbness at the straight-up angle of his arm; then he lets his hand fall back to his side again. “Which constellation is it?”

Akane stays quiet. Usually he answers quickly, only hesitating for a few seconds over even the hardest questions Clay can offer; but this time a whole handful of heartbeats pass, a double span of breaths go by, and Clay frowns up at the sky in the silence of Akane’s not-answer.

“You’re not paying attention,” he protests again, turning his head to see what Akane’s watching instead of the sky. “Are you falling asleep?” He doesn’t really think that’s what’s going on -- Akane couldn’t fall asleep so fast, and never when they’re doing homework -- but the question is almost a laugh in his throat, the beginning of amusement as much as the mild irritation that is the most he can muster for the other. Then he sees what Akane is looking at -- sees the way Akane is looking at _him_ \-- and the laughter in his throat fades to silence as fast as his smile melts to the weight of surprise.

Akane’s eyes are soft. That’s the first thing, Clay thinks, the first detail that catches his attention and knocks him off-balance, is how gentle Akane’s gaze has gone against his face. He’s looking at Clay like he’s something special, like he’s something more than Akane’s old friend, like he’s someone Akane is only just seeing for the very first time. They’re closer than Clay had quite realized -- from this near he can see the dark of Akane’s lashes behind his glasses, can see the individual strands of the other’s hair as it falls sideways off his face. There’s a tiny crease between Akane’s eyebrows, a shift of tension against his lower lip, and it’s then that Clay realizes he’s looking at the other boy’s mouth and feels his stomach swoop like it’s trying to dive down to the base of the tower without him. He blinks hard, startling his focus back up to Akane’s gaze; but Akane’s not looking at his eyes anymore, Akane’s gaze is focused lower than that, the crease in his forehead going deeper as Clay watches. Akane shifts, his forehead bumping against Clay’s as he leans in closer; and then Clay puts together the obvious pieces of evidence, and realizes _he’s looking at my mouth too_ just as Akane lifts his chin and presses his lips against Clay’s.

Akane’s mouth is very, very soft. Clay hadn’t realized, before, that anything could ever be soft or so warm as Akane’s lips are pressed against his. His eyes are still open -- he can see the shine of metal off the frames of Akane’s glasses in his periphery, can see the dark of Akane’s hair close to his face -- and he can feel the rhythm of his heartbeat against the inside of his chest, the pattern of it oddly steady though he can’t figure out why. It shouldn’t be that strange that his eyes are open, that his heartbeat is calm; those are both ordinary things, both perfectly reasonable experiences to be having. And then there’s a hum against his mouth, the whine of Akane making some soft, warm noise against his lips, and when Akane tips his head in closer Clay suddenly loses all the air in his lungs in a rush of surprise that gusts past his lips as a startled exhale. There’s a surge of adrenaline through his veins, a spike of heat that stutters hard at his pulse, and his eyes are closing of their own accord, his proximity-blurred vision going dark as he presses in closer against Akane’s mouth. It’s too hard, he realizes as he moves, his force too much compared to the featherlight gentleness of Akane’s motion; but even as he processes his mistake Akane is making another sound all the way at the back of his tongue and pushing in nearer in immediate response, shifting onto his side as he turns closer towards Clay. His mouth presses harder, his lips burn heat against Clay’s, and the contact is still soft but there’s pressure under it, now, force to match the hand that comes out to catch at Clay’s shoulder and slide up against the back of his neck and hold him still. Clay whimpers something unintelligible with adrenaline, his throat turning the drag of air in his lungs to sound without his intent, but he’s moving too, reaching out to fumble his way into a fist at the front of Akane’s robes to drag the other farther forward as if there’s anywhere for him to go. Akane loses his balance, falls hard enough against Clay’s chest that all the air in Clay’s lungs rushes out of him at the impact with the floor of the Tower; but Clay’s leaning up before he’s even managed another breath, seeking out the warmth of Akane’s mouth against his with all the instinctive grace of the electricity sparkling through his veins.

Akane never does answer Clay’s question, but Clay’s forgotten all about it well before they break apart again.


	21. Enchanted

“Stop it,” Clay mumbles in the low undertone that’s the closest thing to ordinary speech either of them dares in the library. “I can’t get any studying done like this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Akane tells him without looking up from his book or moving his foot from where it’s pressed against Clay’s ankle. “What am I doing?”

“You’re--” Clay starts, and then cuts himself off. Akane risks a glance up from his textbook; it’s not like he’s been paying attention to the words in front of him anyway, and the distraction is more than worth it for the glimpse he gets of the color staining Clay’s cheeks to scarlet. It makes Akane grin, sends another fizzing rush of delight through him to match those that have failed to ease at all over the handful of weeks they’ve had since the night on the Astronomy Tower when Akane found out exactly how soft Clay’s mouth feels against his. They didn’t get their homework done at all that night -- it’s one of the very few assignments Akane has failed to complete his entire time at school -- but he thinks it would have been worth it even if the evening hadn’t unfolded into repeat experiences almost every night since. Akane had wondered if he wouldn’t get tired of it, if kissing Clay would lose the first edge of novelty with too-much repetition; but if anything he’s only wanted to do more of it the more clearly he has memorized the details, until it’s started to spill out into the afternoons and occasionally a morning spent outside the door of the Great Hall in lieu of proper breakfast. It’s gotten to the point that they hardly study together at all anymore; Akane has to do his homework late at night, sitting cross-legged on his bed while he offers answers he knows are far more slipshod than his usual work, and Clay spends nearly every meal listening to an impromptu lecture from Akane in place of the studying they can’t seem to manage if they are left to their own devices and absent an audience. It’s been sustainable for the last month, if only barely; but with final exams looming in their future they both need to spend far longer studying than they have done, and that means finding enough of an audience to curb the shimmering heat under Akane’s skin that just seems to rise to greater intensity every day.

The library seemed like a good idea. The room is far quieter than the Slytherin common room ever is, and without the distractions that fitting together in one of the Hufflepuff couches offers. They have the risk of an audience, if not the actual fact, and with both of their avowed focus on the books in front of them it should be an ideal location to actually achieve some of the work that Akane knows has been falling behind. Unfortunately the distance between their chairs and the impossibility of sneaking in a kiss doesn’t stop their feet from occupying the same space, and even Akane’s best intentions haven’t been able to resist the temptation to angle his foot in against Clay’s, to catch the toe of his shoe under Clay’s robes to push against his calf with a force more ticklish than painful. It’s been occupying all of his attention rather than the studying he’s meant to be doing, and from the way Clay keeps shifting and frowning Akane is fairly certain he’s been holding all the other boy’s attention himself as well.

“We have _finals_ ,” Clay says, still staring at his textbook even though his jaw is so set the possibility he’s actually reading anything on the page is basically zero. “I’m going to fail and get expelled and then I’ll never see you again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Clay,” Akane says, trying very hard to not laugh at this absurdity and not succeeding very well. “If you got expelled I would just come to live the Muggle life with you.”

Clay’s mouth twitches on a smile before he can hold it back, and he ducks his head in a completely futile effort to hide his expression. “Stop it,” he says, lifting a hand to push through his hair and half-block his face. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Akane asks, and he’s teasing but there’s warmth unfolding along his spine too, imagination going gold-hazed with pleasure as he invents a scene from the whole cloth of fantasy. “You could get an office job and I could work at a shop.”

“That would never work,” Clay says, but his smile is gaining traction on his mouth now, and his flush is starting to look more like happiness than embarrassment. “I would be terrible in an office.”

“Then I would get a job,” Akane says, switching gears with the fluidity only entirely imagined scenarios can grant. “I’ll become the head of some company and buy us a house and you can stay at home to greet me with a kiss when I get back from being busy and important.”

“Shut up,” Clay says, and swings his hand out to smack gently against Akane’s wrist. There’s not enough force to carry any pain at all; it’s intended only as a protest, and a gentle one. It might even work except that Akane is half-expecting it and catches Clay’s arm to hold him still where he is. Clay looks up, his attention startled onto Akane’s face by the other’s hold, and Akane grins in answer to the smile still clinging to Clay’s lips. Clay’s eyes go brighter for a moment, his mouth goes softer, and when he speaks even the attempt at responsible irritation is slipping off his voice. “You’re being ridiculous, we can’t fail all our classes.”

“You started it,” Akane tells him, sliding his fingers up higher along Clay’s wrist to reach for his hand instead. Clay’s attention falls to their fingers, his cheeks going darker with self-consciousness, but he doesn’t pull his hand free, even when Akane fits his fingers to interlace with Clay’s. “We’re not going to fail our classes, Clay.”

“You don’t know that,” Clay protests, but he’s smiling at the tangle Akane is making of their hands and Akane can see the stress easing from the lines it’s formed in the other’s forehead. “ _You_ might not but I still could.”

“No you couldn’t,” Akane tells him, tightening his hold on Clay’s hand like a promise and holding his focus on the other until Clay looks back up to meet his gaze. “You’ll be fine. Trust me, Clay.”

Clay’s expression goes soft, just a moment, stress giving way to comfort too immediate for him to resist. His tension comes back after a moment as he shakes his head as if to bring himself back to the present, but Akane is still grinning victory that doesn’t dissolve even when Clay manages to find a frown for him.

“Maybe,” he allows, trying to make it into a growl and only succeeding in the barest sense of the word. “I _might_ be alright. If you stop trying to distract me while I’m studying.”

“I’m not trying to distract you,” Akane protests, but it’s a weak response and he’s drawing his foot back from Clay’s all the same. “Not on purpose. You’re just irresistible, you see.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Clay says, his voice skidding high enough on glowing embarrassment that the librarian hisses at them from behind the desk. They both look over, banter forgotten for a moment of shivering self-consciousness; but nothing else is forthcoming, and after a moment Akane turns his attention back to Clay.

“Fine,” he says, in a whisper low enough Clay has to lean in close to hear. “Do one thing for me and I’ll be so quiet you won’t even know I’m here.”

Clay looks skeptical. “What thing?”

Akane leans in near. “Let me kiss you.”

Clay flinches back, but it’s only by an inch, and the movement doesn’t hide the way his mouth curves onto an involuntary smile. “What? _No_ , we’re in public.”

“Just one,” Akane pleads, tipping in farther over the table to trail Clay’s mouth. “It’d take a second, no one would see.”

“You’re crazy,” Clay tells him, but that’s not a no, and he’s not leaning back as Akane presses his advantage, and he’s still fighting back a smile at his lips. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Only because you’ve enchanted me,” Akane tells him, and that makes Clay huff into the start of a laugh long enough for Akane to duck in close and press his lips to the other boy’s. Clay’s mouth goes soft immediately, easing into reciprocation on contact with Akane’s, and Akane lingers for a moment, long enough to feel the way Clay’s breathing comes warm at his cheek and long enough to touch his tongue feather-light against the part of Clay’s lips. Clay makes a tiny sound, and starts to open his mouth, and Akane has to pull back then if he’s to manage to do it at all. He does, retreating back to sit normally in his seat while Clay is still whimpering through a breath that sounds the hotter absent the weight of Akane’s mouth at his, and by the time Clay blinks himself back into dazed distraction Akane is reaching for his textbook to draw it closer to himself as he flashes a grin at the other boy.

“Study time,” he says, and ducks his head to look at the page while Clay is still coughing a disbelieving laugh. Akane doesn’t look back up over the top of his glasses until Clay has managed to refocus on his own textbook, until he has his free hand up to tangle his fingers idly in his hair in the way he does when he’s not paying attention to what he’s doing. Akane lets himself stare for a few moments, long enough to take in the unconscious frown at Clay’s mouth and the suggestion of green behind the blue of his eyes; then he looks down to his own textbook, and dedicates his attention to actually gathering information from the page.

Neither of them so much as glances at their clasped hands at the edge of the desk.


	22. Distracted

Clay feels sure that the summer is never going to be over.

It’s no fault of his surroundings. There’s more than enough sightseeing to keep him interested for the whole of the vacation, and it’s certainly not that he minds spending time with his family; the travelling is fun, and even homework gets more entertaining when Clay’s trying to explain the details of a particular piece of spellwork to the rapt audience his parents provide. But it’s difficult for Akane’s owls to find him, and the necessary flight distance results in delays of almost a week, sometimes, and besides Clay is finding that letters alone, even the lengthy ones Akane indulges in now, just aren’t the same when they lack the physical contact he has come to crave. He didn’t realize he needed it so badly, hadn’t understood how much he was coming to rely on even the casual weight of Akane’s knee against his or Akane’s hand resting against his hip, and by the time he and his parents finally embark on the last leg of their journey to bring them home, Clay thinks he might explode with anticipation while he’s still on the train to the castle.

He doesn’t, as it turns out. Soul is on his own for the length of the ride too, Maka having stayed back for the summer to study with Professor Stein rather than travelling to visit her mother for the months of break, and he proves to be good enough company to distract Clay from the knot of excitement sticking in the back of his throat and making it hard for him to manage a clear breath with each inhale. They pool their money to buy a dozen kinds of candy from the saleswoman, and then take turns picking items and then daring each other to attempt the riskier ones, and by the time the train pulls into the station Clay has lost track of time enough that the whistle makes him jump with the sudden return of all his panic. His heart is pounding as he gets his bag, his pulse thrumming as he makes his way to the doors to disembark, and he had known Akane wouldn’t be waiting for him but he can’t help but feel a flicker of disappointment when there’s no one waving to him as he gets off to match the way Maka is flailing for Soul’s attention. He takes one of the horseless carriages in to school with the two of them, lets Maka’s chatter about her summertime studies wash over him and lull him into a daze, and then finally they’re drawing up in front of the castle and spilling out of the carriages _en masse_ to enter the Great Hall.

Clay thinks he’s ready. He’s been bracing himself for this for weeks, thinking about the moment of reunion all summer; his shoulders are tense, his palms sweaty, his heart hammering in his chest until he feels like he’s going to pass out. But he’s ready, he’s sure, he’s certain there’s nothing that Akane could do to surprise him; and then he sees him on the other side of the hall, and all the breath leaves his lungs at once as surely as if he’d been hit with a Stunning Spell.

It’s not even that Akane looks any different. There’s nothing changed about the dark of his hair, or the bright of his eyes, or the angle of his shoulders; his robes are the same unadorned black they’ve always been, his height no more than an inch different than it was at the start of summer. It’s just that it’s him, that’s he’s here, that his presence carries so much more weight in reality than it has ever achieved in Clay’s memory, and Clay is still gaping at him from the doorway when Akane picks him out of the crowd and his whole expression melts all at once.

 _Clay_ , he says, and Clay can’t hear the sound of his name but he can see it over the distance, can see it in the shape of Akane’s lips on the sound and in the softness of the other’s eyes as he starts to smile. Akane steps forward, winding through the flood of students without any hesitation at all, and Clay stays where he is, frozen to stillness by the door and staring at Akane as if he’s never seen him before.

“Clay,” Akane says again as he draws near, as Clay’s dazed attention finally manages to settle on the shine of the prefect badge pinned to the front of his robes. “You’re here,” and he’s reaching out before Clay can decide what to do, looping an arm around the other’s shoulders and pulling him forward into a hug Clay can feel shudder all down his spine with electricity, with relief, with happiness so bright he can barely stand it. When he moves it’s without thinking, lifting his arms to draw Akane in close against him, and Akane lets himself be pulled as his hand closes tight at Clay’s hip, as his fingers push up to dig in against the other’s hair. Akane takes a breath, the dragging weight of his inhale so clear Clay can feel it warm against his skin. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Clay says, and his voice wobbles in his throat, trembling like it’s trying to give way to tears he didn’t know he was in danger of. When he blinks his eyes are burning with relief, as if the months of separation are only just hitting him with their full weight. “Akane.”

“I have to sit with the first years,” Akane says against his hair, the words simple but his tone so low and warm that Clay wants to shiver, would capitulate to the urge were it not for Akane’s hold on him bracing him too still to allow for the motion. “I’ll meet you later tonight. Stay awake after dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” Clay says, although he’s starting to frown out of confusion and can’t parse out the logic of what Akane just said. “What do you mean--”

“Just stay up,” Akane says, and then he turns his head in and catches his mouth at the very corner of Clay’s, fitting his lips against the other boy’s for a moment in spite of the possible audience they have. Clay sucks in a startled breath, his eyes going wider for a moment of overheated shock; and Akane pulls away, quick, before he has time to react and before anyone else has a chance to more than glimpse them. Akane flashes a smile, the curve of his lips glowing warm behind his eyes; and then he’s gone, stepping back into the crowd and speaking loud to get the attention of the new first-years so they can be lined up for the Sorting.

It’s not just the first-years who dedicate their attention to Akane. Clay can’t manage to look at anyone or anything else for the entirety of dinner; he eats, he thinks, but without any memory of the food he lifts to his mouth to chew and swallow. It’s just a mechanical action, the same way he responds without really thinking to the polite small talk Maka makes over their table at dinner. Soul keeps eyeing him sideways with a crease of concern forming itself between his eyebrows, but Clay barely has the attention to spare to notice the other’s reaction, much less go through the motions to ease it. He’s too caught by the curve of Akane’s mouth from across the distance of the room, too focused on the shades of blue under the dark of Akane’s hair he’s not sure he ever noticed before, too breathlessly anxious for the occasional glances Akane sends him between extended conversations with the new first-year Slytherins. Each one fires warmth all through Clay’s veins, as if he’s turning into sunlight in the space of his own skin; but it’s hardly the span of minutes before the glow fades and he falls back to anxious anticipation of the next flicker of eye contact. In the end he doesn’t notice when dinner ends, too caught by watching Akane collect the first-years of his house to lead them back to their common room to get up from his table, until Soul has to shake his shoulder to snap him back to the present.

“You okay?” the other boy asks, softly and without making eye contact; Clay’s pretty sure even Maka won’t notice the inquiry, framed as subtly as it is and while she’s in the middle of bickering over hypothetical prefect assignments with Black*Star. “You’ve been really out of it.”

“Oh,” Clay says. Akane’s moving across the room with his fleet of new students; Clay fights the urge to watch the other’s approach. “Uh. Yeah. I’m fine.” He reaches for an excuse, scrambles himself into something insufficient even in his own mind. “Maybe I’m still kind of jet-lagged.”

“Sure,” Soul says, and then there’s movement right at Clay’s shoulder and he looks up just as Akane stumbles sideways with uncharacteristic clumsiness to bump against the edge of the table.

“Oops,” Akane says, “sorry” but he’s not looking at the table and he’s not looking at Soul; he’s staring at Clay, his mouth curving on a smile that looks nothing like apologetic. “My mistake.”

“Ah,” Clay says in a stunning display of articulate communication. “Yeah.” Akane’s smile tugs wider, his eyes sparkle for a moment behind the cover of his glasses; and then he turns away to follow the cluster of first years, speaking loud in a carrying tone that makes him sound more like another professor than a student. It’s not until he’s leaving the doors that Clay realizes Soul is still standing next to him, that he comes back to self-consciousness in a rush that flares heat all across his cheeks.

“Uh,” he says, turning back and looking up at the other boy. “Yeah. Jet-lagged. I did a lot of travelling.”

Clay’s hoping with some desperate irrationality that maybe his distraction went unnoticed, maybe it somehow seemed less painfully obvious than he suddenly feels with the awareness of Soul’s attention on him; but Soul is staring at him with such a deliberately neutral expression that Clay knows he’s been caught out without the other boy even saying anything. Clay flinches, bracing himself for whatever reaction Soul is going to have, but Soul just clears his throat and looks away towards the door where Akane just left.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding almost bored, as disinterested as if they really are talking about Clay’s summer vacation. “Makes sense.”

“Soul!” Maka’s voice is shrill, carrying through the noise of the other students more clearly than even Akane’s intentional tone did. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” Soul shouts back. “Calm down.” He shifts at Clay’s side, turning towards Maka like he’s going to leave; when his hand touches the other’s shoulder Clay almost jumps just from the surprise of it.

“You’ll be fine,” Soul says, in that same low tone that Clay can barely make out, and then he’s gone, moving away through the crowd and shouting back some response to Maka’s comment as he goes. Clay glances back at him but the other boy doesn’t look back; to an outside observer, he’s very sure the whole interaction would be totally unremarkable. It makes him smile, even around the burn of the embarrassment still hot in his veins, and then he finally gets to his feet to push away from the table and join the last stragglers as they make their way out of the doors to head to their respective common rooms.

Clay goes straight to his room. He has some vague hope of a message from Akane, or maybe the impossibility of Akane himself waiting for him; but of course there’s nothing, just the familiar presence of his dormmates and the easy chatter of acquaintances catching up after months of vacation. It’s simple to answer their questions, easy to waste an hour in the back-and-forth with the other boys, and it’s not until his housemates start drawing their curtains closed around their beds that Clay thinks again about Akane’s request that he stay awake.

It’s not hard to manage. Clay leaves his curtains open longer than anyone else, and even when Jaime finally surrenders to the lullaby of exhaustion he doesn’t comment on Clay’s hesitation in pulling them closed, just yawns through a “Goodnight” as he pulls the blankets up over himself before reaching for his bed hangings and the Silencing Charms laid into them. Clay smiles in reply, and waits until the sound of Jaime’s movement cuts off with the barrier of the charmed curtains; and then he swings his legs sideways out of bed, and gets up to pace across the room. He doesn’t know what to do -- the room is very quiet with just him moving in it, as if the whole of the world has been covered in a layer of invisible snow that’s absorbing every sound -- and he doesn’t know how long he’s going to have to stay awake before Akane does whatever it is he has planned. Clay’s heart is pounding harder on adrenaline now than it was even during dinner, he can feel the jittery force of excitement lacing all through his veins with every breath he takes; it makes him feel like he’s electrified, as if someone might see him glowing if one of his roommates were to draw their curtains back to see. But no one does, and there’s no one watching when Clay finishes his nervous-energy pacing and subsides to sit at the edge of his bed again. He wonders, again, how long he’s going to have to wait, thinks about getting up to get a book to read, and he’s just about to go in pursuit of one when there’s a faint noise against the window, like a leaf rustling against the glass where Clay knows there have never been any trees.

He thinks for a brief, wild moment that it’s Akane, somehow outside the dorm window via the use of a charm or a broom or some other magical aid, is jumping to his feet before he’s seen what’s on the other side. But there’s no outline of a person, no shine of light off glasses; just something white and fluttering at the windowsill, like a bird but far too small to be anything but a hummingbird. Clay squints at it as he crosses the room, trying to gain a grasp on what the shape tapping gently against the glass could be, but it’s not until he’s reaching for the latch that he can finally make sense of the outline enough to see the figure of an origami crane against the darkness outside.

“Oh,” he breathes, startled out of silence by the realization, and then he opens the window and the crane flutters inside, soaring through the air as if riding some nonexistent breeze as Clay holds his palms out in suggestion. It lands against his fingers, wings shifting to steady itself; and then it ducks its head, and the shape of it collapses before Clay can realize what’s happening, the elegant lines of the crane unfolding like a Howler in reverse to leave him with a sheet of much-creased paper in his open hands.

The message is simple, when Clay blinks himself into focus on the familiar handwriting, the instructions too clear to be misunderstood for even a moment. _Come downstairs_ it says, the words nestled into the very center of the paper as if the folds around them are keeping them secret. Clay sighs into something like relief, his skin prickling in anticipation, and the paper folds into itself again, converting back to the crane and soaring out of his grasp again before he can manage more than a single startled inhale. The crane lands against his bed, skimming across the sheets before coming to rest by his pillow, and Clay is impressed by the spellwork but he’ll take more time to admire that later, because right now he has someone waiting for him.

The common room is empty when Clay comes down the stairs, padding softly as if he might wake someone. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise; it isn’t, really, or at least not enough of one to even take the edge off the flutter of Clay’s heart in his chest. He just glances at the empty chairs, a quick once-over to make sure Akane didn’t figure out some way to spirit himself into the Hufflepuff common room without Clay’s assistance, and then goes for the door, his pulse thrumming in his throat and his breathing coming too-fast on anticipation. He pushes against the weight of the portrait, leaning his shoulder hard against the support to ease it open; and Akane catches the edge of the door, his hold taking the weight so suddenly Clay nearly falls at the abrupt loss of resistance.

“Akane,” Clay blurts, surprise turning the other’s name to an exclamation on his tongue. “You’re here.”

“Yes,” Akane says, but he’s leaning in already, before he’s even finished the word, and then his fingers are in Clay’s hair and his lips are pressing against Clay’s mouth and Clay is shutting his eyes, surrendering so immediately to the friction of Akane’s mouth against his that he entirely forgets where they are, that the portrait is still open and that he’s still standing inside the common room and that technically Akane is still in the corridor, that they are ostensibly in a public hallway instead of the semi-private retreat offered by the Astronomy tower or a dark corner of the library. For a minute, with Akane’s lips warm against his and Akane’s fingers gentle in his hair, Clay forgets about everything at all except the surge of near-painful satisfaction at being together again. He lets his hold on the portrait go, reaches to curl his fingers into Akane’s robe instead, and for a moment they’re caught together like that, with Akane’s hand in Clay’s hair and Clay’s fingers making a fist of the fabric just over the prefect badge still on Akane’s robe. Then the portrait swings in against them, bumping hard enough against Akane’s shoulder to jar them apart, and Clay is gasping “Sorry!” even before Akane has huffed an exhale of reaction to the impact.

“It’s fine,” Akane says, spilling the words to heat against Clay’s mouth, and presses another kiss hard against the other’s lips before drawing away. “Though we should probably move out of the doorway.”

“Ah,” Clay says. “Right.”

“Right,” Akane says, but he’s not moving away, and he’s not letting Clay go. There’s a pause; then he takes a breath, and says “I actually wanted to see if you felt up for a little adventure to the kitchens,” with the words so close against Clay’s mouth they sound more like innuendo than sincerity.

Clay has to blink, has to fight for rationality when Akane’s so close he can feel the rhythm of the other boy’s breath against his lips. “The kitchens?”

“Yeah.” Akane blinks, his gaze dipping down to Clay’s mouth and lingering there as he continues. “We could see if there’s any cake left over from dinner.”

“Okay,” Clay says, because he’d agree to anything Akane wanted of him and this is a simple request. “There was cake?”

Akane’s laugh is bright against his mouth. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, and leans in to kiss hard against Clay’s lips before drawing away and letting his hand go to push the portrait open again instead. “Just come with me, Clay.”

Clay’s smiling before he thinks about it at all, his mouth curving helplessly on the delight that hit him when he saw Akane on the other side of the door, the first bright shock of it fading enough to let him feel the full weight of the all-over happiness sweeping out into his veins and spilling warm across the span of his shoulders.

“Yeah,” he says, and presses his hand against the door just over Akane’s so they can hold it open together. “Okay.”

He’s never been so happy for summer to be over.


	23. Interrupted

“I thought--” Clay starts, cutting himself off with a sharp intake of breath Akane can feel echoed in the grip the other has against his arm. “You said we were going to study.”

“We are,” Akane says without lifting his head from the weight his lips are making at the other’s jawline. “In a minute.”

“Akane,” Clay sighs, but it comes out on the beginnings of a laugh, and when Akane pushes him Clay falls backwards by a pair of too-fast steps. “It’s been ten already.”

“It’s fine,” Akane soothes. Clay’s robes are loose around his shoulders; Akane doesn’t even need to lift his head to see in order to find the knot of Clay’s tie, as lopsided now as if he’s only just learned how to tie it, and hook his fingers between the weight of the fabric and the collar of the other’s shirt. Clay hisses an inhale in startled reaction to the force as Akane drags the knot of the fabric down and loose of itself, but he doesn’t flinch away, just tightens his fingers the closer against Akane’s arm.

“We’re going to get caught,” Clay says. Akane’s kissing against the line of his neck, now, working down from the soft gold of Clay’s short-cropped hair along the angle of his jaw and to the thrum of his voice in his throat; Clay’s voice sounds lower from this close up, with the shrill edges of panic softened to a purr by proximity. “Professor B.J. is going to catch us, Akane, we should go somewhere else.”

“There _is_ nowhere else,” Akane informs Clay. He does lift his head for a moment, leaving the fall of Clay’s tie to the white of his shirt so he can bring both hands to bear against the top button of the other’s collar. Clay’s hand slips away from his arm, the other boy makes a faint desperate sound in the back of his throat, but he’s still not pulling away, and when Akane moves Clay lets his hold on his arm go completely to reach out and press his hand against the other’s hip instead. “Your Common Room is full of Hufflepuffs studying and mine is full of our friends.” Akane works the topmost of Clay’s buttons free and moves down to the next; it’s easier than the first, something he can manage one-handed, and that leaves his other hand free to drop back to Clay’s waist, to drag along the curve of the other’s body while Clay’s head dips forward, while his lashes flutter and his breathing hisses in responsive heat to the contact. “The House Elves check the closets and the library is never private. B.J.’s out today anyway, he won’t find us.”

“We should study,” Clay protests, but it’s such a weak attempt Akane doesn’t even hesitate for it before he’s leaving Clay’s buttons half-undone and reaching to tug the other’s shirt up and free of his pants. “ _Ah_ , god, Akane.”

“Yeah,” Akane purrs. “We’ll study later” and he leans in again, pressing his mouth to Clay’s before the other can try to piece together another one of his token protests. They are that, at least in practice; Clay’s concern may be real, but it’s also unjustified or at least excessive, and it melts like dew to the sun against the weight of Akane’s mouth. Clay’s hand comes up, his fingers settling into Akane’s hair with as much unthinking grace as if they belong there, and when Akane touches his tongue against the part of Clay’s lips Clay opens his mouth in immediate concession to the unstated suggestion. Akane leans in closer, Clay makes a faint desperate noise against his mouth, and when Akane licks past Clay’s lips he completely loses his grasp on what arguments he had to talk the other boy into staying. He knows they were good, persuasive points; but he can’t remember them now, and honestly it doesn’t seem like Clay needs much convincing at this point anyway. His hand is tightening against Akane’s head, his fingers sinking into the other’s hair to urge him closer as if there’s anywhere for them to go; there’s just the worktable behind Clay, and they’re both so near against it they’re already leaning precariously over the support. But Akane’s not about to reject the suggestion of Clay’s fingers in his hair, and when he takes a half-step forward Clay topples backwards, half-falling over the desk as his hold at Akane’s hair drags them both into more of a lean than an upright stance. Clay is breathing harder, Akane can hear the heat whimpering on the other’s inhales, can catch the sound against his tongue; but Akane’s heart is pounding fever-fast in his chest too, all his skin flushing hot as he tightens his fingers against Clay’s hip to hold him still against the forward press of his body. His knees slot in with Clay’s, Clay’s feet slip apart by an inch, and Akane rocks himself forward to press flush against Clay’s hips before he can give himself the chance to think through the action. He’s too hot, his movements coming too much on autopilot, and then he’s grinding hard against Clay’s hip and pressing his leg high between Clay’s and Clay is making a startled, broken noise, his exhale coming hard and sudden enough that it breaks them out of their kiss. Akane doesn’t mind much; he’s feeling light-headed anyway, can make good use of the rush of air filling his lungs as he grinds himself closer against Clay with reflexive force.

“Akane,” Clay gasps, but it’s not protest; he’s arching off the edge of the bench, his hold at the other’s hip tightening and tugging as if to force their bodies closer. His hand in Akane’s hair slides down, dragging against the curve of the other’s neck, and then his touch is sliding inside the edge of Akane’s collar and struggling for purchase against the knot of the other’s tie. It takes him a moment to figure out what he’s doing, another to gain traction against the fabric, and Akane isn’t granting him even the assistance of stillness to collect his attention; he’s grinding closer against the other boy, finding a rhythm to his movements as instinctively graceful as it is insistent. Clay’s fingers are pulling at his clothes and Clay’s breathing is spilling hot over his mouth but Akane doesn’t care, Akane’s heart is racing and he can’t pay attention to the details of his tie slipping loose or the fist Clay’s fingers are making at his shirt when they are moving against each other like this, with Clay arching up in little helpless motions like he’s trying to get closer and Akane pushing up against the edge of the table with every forward motion of his hips, and his hand is sliding under Clay’s shirt and pressing close against sweat-warm skin and--

“Afternoon.”

Akane almost yelps in the first rush of surprise. He’s sure he would make a sound in some sincerely embarrassing upper register of his voice if he had the air to do so; but luckily his throat closes off in the first jolt of terrified shock, and it’s impossible to force sound past the wall of tension at the back of his tongue, so all he achieves is a tiny hiss of panic as he twists around in answer to the too-familiar voice.

Professor Stein is standing in the doorway of the classroom, one eyebrow raised above the frames of his glasses and his gaze fixed unswervingly on the picture Clay and Akane are making against the bench. He’s not alone -- Professor Albarn is standing just behind him, looking significantly more embarrassed at having walked in on the two of them than Stein does. Stein just looks considering, is watching the two of them as if he’s waiting for the next exciting thing to happen, and for just a minute they’re all four still like that: Albarn looking nearly apologetic, Stein watching Clay and Akane with a completely neutral expression, Clay so still Akane’s thinks he may have stopped breathing, and Akane with his hand pressed against Clay’s chest and his knee between the other’s legs. There’s a beat of time, a heartbeat of hesitation that goes long on uncertainty; and finally Akane clears his throat and offers “Good afternoon, sir,” with as much composure as he can bring to bear with his heart skidding out on adrenaline in his chest.

Stein lifts a hand to push his glasses up his nose; for a moment the light catches the lenses and casts them into an unreadable glare. “Were you two intending to do some studying for Potions?”

Clay makes a tiny, faint sound of horror. “Ah,” Akane says.“Yes, sir.”

Stein doesn’t look away. “I believe Mr. Sizemore’s History of Magic marks are suffering more than his Potions work. I recommend you take the afternoon to study for the upcoming exam.” A pause, drawn long enough that Akane can feel it like the beat of a drum marking out time. “In your common room.”

Professor Albarn clears his throat, looks away from Clay and Akane to Stein in front of him. “Stein, let’s just--”

“In a minute, Spirit.” Stein tips his head back, letting the glare of his glasses obscure his eyes again. “Do let me know if you would like me to speak to Professor B.J. about private tutoring for either of you. I’m sure he would be happy to work in _individual_ sessions with anyone who needs additional time.”

Akane clears his throat. “No,” he manages, his voice coming out steady but much breathier than he intended. “No sir, I believe we’ll be fine.”

“Suit yourself,” Stein drawls, with every appearance of complete calm in his voice, and then turns around to Professor Albarn again. The other is as red as his hair, looking as embarrassed as if he was the one caught making out in a classroom and not Clay and Akane, but he responds quickly enough to whatever it is Stein is saying to him, and Akane isn’t about to protest the opportunity thus offered to extricate himself without an audience.

Clay doesn’t speak the whole time they are untangling themselves and Akane is pushing their clothes back into a minimal semblance of order. Akane’s not completely sure he’s aware of their surroundings at all; Clay’s sustaining a focused, distant gaze that doesn’t allow for him to track Akane’s movements at all, and if he’s not stopping Akane from pulling his clothes back into place he’s not helping either. He’s just staring at the point where the far wall meets the ceiling, his gaze blank and mouth set like he’s trying his very best to evaporate where he stands. Akane gets Clay’s shirt mostly buttoned up and tugged into semi-decency, and that’s all he has time for before his own self-consciousness gets the better of him and urges them out of the room before Professor Stein decides to do something more dramatic than suggest a supervised study session. Clay is still gazing at the wall, his forehead creasing now like he’s trying to achieve his disintegration through force of will; Akane takes the other’s hand in his, closing his fingers tight around Clay’s wrist so he won’t lose him, and pulls him off the edge of the bench and towards the door of the classroom. Clay follows in his wake, apparently willing to be led if not to move on his own at all; Akane appreciates his passivity, if just for the excuse it gives him to focus on something other than the two professors watching them from the doorway. Stein’s expression doesn’t change as they approach, the flatline neutrality of his mouth doesn’t waver; even the reflection off his glasses holds steady for far longer than Akane expects it should as they approach. Professor Albarn is still blushing, glowing as if he’s as embarrassed for interrupting them as they are at getting caught; but there’s tension at the corner of his mouth, too, the suggestion of laughter awkward or amused, Akane doesn’t take the time to try to figure out which. He just nods with as much dignity as he can muster with his tie undone and the edge of his shirt untucked and does his level best to not sprint for the safety promised by the other side of the doorway.

They make it out unhindered by either word or action; Akane tows Clay along the corridor and down to the next cross-hallway until they are at least out of sight of the Potions classroom doorway. There’s few students out and about in this part of the castle, which at least spares them from an audience before Akane is able to pull them into an alcove far too small for privacy but enough to grant them the moment he needs to get their clothes back into actual order instead of just a rushed attempt at such. Clay continues to trail Akane, as willing to be pushed to a stop as to be led; he still looks so glazed Akane isn’t completely sure the other boy is seeing him at all. He stumbles into the alcove at Akane’s push and lets the other push him around so they’re facing each other, but he’s still not tracking Akane’s movements, still looks dazed out of coherency as Akane buttons Clay’s collar back up over the suggestion of a bruise left by his mouth.

“Are you okay?” Akane asks while he’s working the topmost collar button back into place. He glances up at the other but Clay is still staring out past his head, gazing into the empty hallway as if there is anything to see. “Clay?”

“I think,” Clay starts, and then stops, blinking at the wall past Akane’s shoulder like he’s reading from some invisible text printed there. “I can never go to History of Magic again.”

Akane’s embarrassment catches in his chest, tangling on itself and pressurizing his throat until his exhale comes out as a cough of helpless laughter. “I don’t think you can avoid History of Magic and Charms for the next two years, Clay.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Clay says, still with that distant stare. “It’s the only way.”

Akane tugs Clay’s tie into alignment around his neck. “You could always throw yourself into the Great Lake.”

“You’re right,” Clay agrees with perfect equanimity. “That’s the real answer. Thank you, Akane.”

“Don’t mention it,” Akane deadpans. He folds Clay’s tie into an even knot and tugs it steady before cinching it up close against the other’s collar. “Really, it’s okay. I’m sure the professors interrupt students all the time.”

“Oh my god,” Clay breathes in tones of bone-deep horror. “I can’t believe _Professor Stein_ caught us making out in the _Potions classroom_.”

“Look on the bright side,” Akane tells him with aggressive optimism as he tugs Clay’s robes back into alignment over the other’s slumped shoulders. “I was right in the end.”

Clay blinks, his attention finally caught enough to bring his focus back to Akane’s face. “What?”

Akane raises an eyebrow and quirks a smile. “We didn’t get caught by Professor B.J..”

“Oh my god,” Clay groans, tipping his head back against the wall to whimper at the ceiling, and Akane laughs again, the sound coming more easily but just as irrepressibly as it did a moment before. Clay lifts a hand to his face, the sleeve of his robes falling over his cheeks to half-cover the blush that is finally starting to spread over his expression like dawn breaking; but then he starts to laugh too, and if it’s a little bit panicked and hysterical in the back of his throat Akane can hear it easing as the first horrified tension in the other gives way to self-deprecating amusement. It’s a risk to lean in for the other in the open hallway, the more so when Stein and Albarn are at most a corridor away; but Akane can’t resist the temptation to reach out for Clay’s robes and tug the other forward and into a kiss so quick it’s very nearly chaste by his standards.

It’s okay, he decides. They’re just going to need to find a different place to themselves.


	24. Competitive

Clay finishes his OWLs last.

That’s not unexpected. He knew Akane would beat him, in time at least since they won’t know their scores until the end of the summer, and after the brief distraction of seeing the other leaving the examination room Clay ducked his head over his parchment and focused entirely on the questions in front of him. He lost track of time, forgot even to worry about the glowing numbers marking out the countdown at the front of the room, and by the time he set his quill down and looked up the room was empty but for him and the examiners. He had a brief, horrifying moment of thinking he had gone over time without noticing; but the countdown was still running, clicking its steady way through the last five minutes of the exam time, and that left Clay plenty of time to bring his parchment up to the front and return to pack his things away in his bag. The countdown chimes the end of the session just as he’s leaving the room, like the sound is an announcement of summer just for him; it makes his skin prickle with self-awareness, as if the end of school has made him a different person, somehow, now that OWLs are over and there’s three months of freedom stretching before him. He feels like he could go anywhere, do anything; and then he sees the motion out by the Quidditch pitch, the faint shapes of a pair of students dipping and weaving around the goalposts, and his feet shift to draw him in that direction before he’s made a decision to move.

Akane’s sitting in the stands when Clay arrives. The benches look overlarge with no one else in them, like they’re an oversized frame for the one boy leaning back to weight his elbows against the support of the bench behind him so he can recline into a slouch instead of the upright angle the occupied seats usually require. He looks over as soon as Clay steps onto the pitch, his head turning as if Clay has shouted his name or as if he’s placed a Tracking Tracer on the other; and then he smiles, his whole expression glowing to warmth as he straightens, and Clay smiles back with more sincere happiness than he thought he would possibly have left after exams.

“Hey,” Akane says as Clay draws close enough to be in range of ordinary speech. Akane’s sitting up from his slouch against the bench behind him, pushing the weight of his hair back from his face one-handed as if to clear his vision to see Clay properly; Clay sees a glimpse of the gold star across the other’s eye as he climbs the stairs to the bench Akane’s sitting on. Akane lets his hair go and reaches out instead for Clay’s hand, and Clay doesn’t really need either the support or the guidance but he takes it anyway, and when Akane turns his hand to interlace their fingers he smiles with the pleasure of it even before the other has drawn him down to sit close alongside him.

“Congrats on finishing,” Akane tells him, beaming at Clay from under the shadow of his hair. “How did it go?”

Clay laughs, the pressure of relief and happiness too strong in his chest for even the shiver of nerves he feels at the question to get any kind of a toehold. “I have no idea. I’ll find out when I get my scores back.” He looks up, away from the blue of Akane’s eyes to the bright of the sky instead and the two shapes outlined by dark robes against the light. “Is that Maka?”

“And Soul,” Akane confirms. “She wanted to practice for tryouts next year.”

“She’s pretty good,” Clay says, not sure if it’s objectively true but feeling his pulse speed at the studied elegance of the maneuvers Maka is making through the air.

“She is,” Akane agrees. “She’s only made two goals since they came out here, though, and I’m pretty sure Soul let her have the first because she was getting really irritated.”

Clay looks back at Akane. The other hasn’t looked away from him; he’s still watching Clay with that smile soft at his mouth and bright in his eyes. It makes Clay’s skin tingle, makes his mouth draw taut on a smile he couldn’t restrain even if he wanted to. “I didn’t know he was that good.”

“Yeah.” Akane tightens his hold on Clay’s hand, presses his thumb in warm against the other’s. “Turns out he’s been practicing with Black*Star and didn’t tell Maka. He’s going to try out for the Gryffindor team as a Keeper next year.”

Clay takes a breath of surprise. “Maka’s trying for Chaser, isn’t she?”

“Yep.” Akane glances back up to the pair overhead. They’ve stopped playing for the moment; they’re hovering in front of one of the goalposts now, Maka gesturing through whatever she’s saying with a force that makes Clay’s stomach swoop into panic for the gap between their brooms and the grass of the pitch below. “I don’t think he’s told her yet.”

Clay blinks. “Isn’t she going to be mad?”

Akane huffs a laugh and grins up at the other two. “Definitely. She’s been saying for years she’ll be the star Slytherin Chaser just like her mom was, she’ll be livid if Soul gets in her way.”

Clay looks back up. Maka’s swung away from the goalposts again, is turning at the other end of the pitch to take another long run-up at the goal again. Soul looks calm, almost bored even from this distance; but as Maka draws close and swings into her approach to throw the Quaffle Soul tips himself sideways almost casually, veering away from his position in front of the middle post to catch the Quaffle one-handed against the tips of his fingers. “He’s really good though.”

“Yeah.” Akane slides his fingers free of Clay’s hold; Clay looks down, startled out of his attention by the unexpected loss, but Akane is just reaching out to wrap his arm around Clay’s waist instead, drawing the other in closer against him as he leans in to bump his forehead just against the side of Clay’s head. “I’m glad she didn’t go to Gryffindor, we would have all gotten destroyed if they were playing on the same team.”

“Hufflepuff’s going to be destroyed anyway,” Clay observes. “I thought we might be able to catch back up after Justin gave up Seeking for his apprenticeship.”

“You still might,” Akane tells him. “If Maka and Soul face off in the first match Soul could shut Slytherin down for Hufflepuff to play against Gryffindor.”

“Mm,” Clay allows. “Maybe.” He turns his head to the side, enough to ruffle his hair where Akane’s forehead is pressing it flat to his scalp; Akane hums a low note of happiness and presses in closer as Clay starts to smile. Akane has his eyes shut, his whole expression relaxed into comfort as he leans into Clay; his arm is steady, his hold at Clay’s hip warm and certain.

“At least I don’t have to play against you,” Clay says, turning in closer until his forehead is pressed against Akane’s and his words are coming almost at the other’s mouth. Akane smiles and huffs a laugh and Clay grins wider. “I’d fall off my broom without you even needing to do anything.”

“As if I could ever compete with you,” Akane purrs. “I’d let you win just to see you smile.”

Clay can feel his cheeks burn with embarrassment as he coughs himself into a laugh. “Shut up,” he says as Akane giggles against the corner of his mouth. “You play me in wizard chess all the time.”

“You’re better at wizard chess than you are at flying,” Akane tells him, and lifts his chin to press a kiss against Clay’s mouth. Clay takes a breath, startled by the warmth of the friction at his lips, and Akane pulls back just as Clay is starting to lean in to match the weight of the other’s mouth at his. “I hardly ever have to let you win.”

“You don’t let me win,” Clay protests. “Do you?”

Akane laughs. “No,” he says, and lifts a hand to catch against the windswept tangle of Clay’s hair. “You do that all on your own.” And he’s leaning in, fitting his mouth against the other’s while Clay is still startling himself into a smile. Clay starts a laugh against Akane’s mouth, and lets his eyes close, and this time when he leans into the kiss Akane’s fingers just curl closer into his hair.

Clay forgets all about Quidditch, after that.


	25. Brief

Clay’s voice is even more beautiful than Akane remembers it being.

“Akane,” Clay gasps, whimpering the other’s name with a breath so audibly strained Akane can hear the movement of his hands telegraphed clear in the shudder under Clay’s speech. “We--we _can’t_.”

“I missed you,” Akane purrs, entirely disregarding Clay’s half-formed and insufficiently supported argument. He has the other boy’s robes completely undone down the front, is fitting his hands in against the thin of the button-up shirt Clay has on underneath the dark weight of fabric; he can feel Clay suck in a startled inhale of air at the contact, can feel the way the other boy goes pliant to his touch even before Akane has slid his hands down to catch and frame the slight dip at the other’s waist. “I didn’t get to see you on the train.”

“You couldn’t do this on the _train_ ,” Clay says, but it sounds like a little bit of a laugh now, and Akane is grinning when he leans in close to kiss Clay back against the wall of the tiny closet he pulled the other boy into mere minutes after his arrival at the front doors of the school. Clay doesn’t offer the least physical resistance in spite of his verbal protests, and even the latter gives way to a hum of simple pleasure as Akane’s mouth finds out that of the other boy. Clay is a little taller than Akane remembers, a little broader across the shoulders than he was at summer’s start; but in the dark his mouth tastes the same, the soft give of his lips is familiar in a way unchanged by the handful of months apart, and Akane’s hands are sliding down even as he distracts Clay with the easy drag of a kiss from the way he’s mapping out the differences in the other’s body against the weight of his palms.

“I could have,” he says eventually, offering a response to the other’s statement so delayed that he can see Clay blink in the dim lighting as he struggles to catch up with the logic of Akane’s words. “We could get a compartment to ourselves and cast a few Mirage Mirrors on the glass, no one would have any idea what we were getting up to.” His hands curve around Clay’s hips, his fingers tighten; when Akane pulls forward Clay submits without resistance, stumbling away from the support of the wall and against Akane in front of him with nothing more than a huffed laugh for reply. “Too bad I don’t take the train in to school.”

“Good thing,” Clay manages, although his hands are settling into Akane’s hair and winding their way into the weight of the dark locks that fall past Akane’s shoulders, now, thanks to a summer spent without a haircut Akane deemed unnecessary. “We’d get caught and expelled, probably.”

“They wouldn’t expel us for a little kissing,” Akane tells him as he tugs at the hem of Clay’s shirt to move them to something beyond kissing. “Everyone knows the older students are constantly making out in closets around school.”

“There’s no way,” Clay tells him, but his fingers are sliding farther into Akane’s hair, and he sounds distracted, either by the motion of his own hands or the work of Akane’s. “They’d never get anything done if they were all like you.”

“I go to classes,” Akane protests with no heat at all, because his palms are fitting flush against Clay’s skin, now, he can feel the faint stick and catch of sweat warm under the weight of his hands against the other’s waist. Clay shivers at the contact, falls back against the support of the wall behind him, and Akane takes a step in to close the gap, to fit his knee between Clay’s and angle his shoulders closer to pin the other back against the wall. “I’m a _prefect_ , Clay, I’m entrusted with the responsibility of the next generation of wizards. I’m a good student, you should know that by now.”

“You have everyone fooled,” Clay informs him. Akane slides his hands around Clay’s waist and up to spread out over the curve of his spine and Clay’s argument fades off into a full-body tremor for a moment. “You’re not a good student, you’re...you’re a sex demon.”

“A virginal one,” Akane tells him. “We could fix that, you know.”

“We could _not_ ,” Clay hisses, the words sharp on shocked embarrassment at the very suggestion. Akane imagines he can feel Clay’s blush radiating off his cheeks as if it’s giving off light of its own, like a lamp glowing faintly just under the surface of his skin. “We’re in a _closet_ , Akane.”

“The dorms are empty,” Akane says. He’s not really expecting Clay to agree -- the suggestion is more to stoke the blush across the other’s face higher and hotter -- but putting words to it makes his own blood burn hotter in his veins, makes his breathing catch in his throat as the image flickers clear into his heat-laced imagination. “We could go back to my room and cast a Silencing Spell on the bed. I bet I can’t make you blush if I can’t talk.”

“What?” Clay says, sounding lost by this turn of conversation. “If the Spell’s on the bed why would you--” He cuts himself off sharply, but not quickly enough; Akane can see his cheeks go warmer, actually flickering with enough accidental magic to illuminate Clay’s skin like a hand held in front of a light source. “ _Akane_.”

“It would be fun,” Akane says, desire reckless and hot in his veins, and he rocks his weight forward to press his leg closer between Clay’s, to angle his hip in against the proof of Clay’s interest taut at the front of his jeans. “You wouldn’t have to fantasize about me tonight, you could have it all for real, I’d do anything you wanted me to do.”

“We _can’t_ ,” Clay groans, and he sounds certain enough that Akane knows this is a failed attempt at seduction even as Clay’s fingers tighten in his hair and tug to urge Akane closer with the helpless desperation of desire. “We’re supposed to be at dinner. _You’re_ supposed to be at dinner, you’re a _prefect_.”

“It’s fine,” Akane soothes. “It’s fine, Maka’s there, she’s enough prefect for all three years put together.” He slides his palm up against Clay’s back, sweeping along the curve of his spine and out over the dip of his shoulderblade, and Clay shivers like he’s been chilled, like there’s energy running through his whole body that has to be set free all at once. “I can take an hour or two with you while she corrals the first years.”

“What about dinner?” Clay asks. “I’ve been on a train all day, I’m hungry.”

“You wouldn’t rather spend the time with me?” Akane asks, leaning in over the few inches between their mouths to press a kiss against Clay’s lips. Clay huffs amusement, delight spilling against Akane’s lips as he kisses the other, and Akane can’t help but smile too, as if his own happiness is caught and following in the footsteps of Clay’s. “It’s been three months apart with nothing but letters to sustain you--”

“ _Filthy_ letters,” Clay groans interruption. “I was so afraid my father would find one of them after I read them.”

“--Nothing but inventive letters to sustain you, and all you care about is dinner?” Akane tips his head sideways, presses his mouth in against the line of Clay’s jaw instead of the soft of his lips. “Didn’t you _miss_ me, Clay?”

“How can you--” Clay starts before Akane parts his lips and touches his tongue against the soft of the skin just under the other’s ear, at the very back edge of his jawline. Clay shudders at the sensation, his fingers digging into handfuls of Akane’s hair; and then he pulls to urge the other boy back and off him. Akane thinks Clay is finally sincere about his protest, is finally going to truly demand they return to the Great Hall; but the hold in his hair doesn’t loosen, Clay’s grip doesn’t ease to push against Akane’s shoulders or hips, and when he speaks his voice is low, catching far in the back of his throat and purring into the dim-lit space between them like it’s trying to expand to fill the close-encompassed space around their shoulders.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Akane,” Clay says, his hands going gentle to slide through Akane’s hair as Akane’s blood shimmers into illumination in his veins, as Akane’s heart catches to heat in his throat. “Of _course_ I missed you.” And this time he’s the one who pushes forward to kiss the other boy, to fit his mouth against the give of Akane’s lips as he tips himself up off the wall and take a step forward to urge Akane back. There’s not really anywhere for them to go -- the closet is small, all Clay manages to do is pin Akane’s shoulders to the wall at his back instead of his own -- but Akane has no intention of protesting even while he still retains the coherency to, before Clay braces a hand at the back of his neck and sets about kissing Akane right out of any functioning thought at all.

Akane hates missing Clay during the summer, but he loves the satisfaction of getting him back again.


	26. Slide

“ _Mercurium Mysterium_ ,” Clay tries again, swinging a cleanly-defined arc through the air with his wand in some vain hope that this latest attempt will achieve what the last half-dozen have not and collapse the heap of sugar in front of him into a silvery pool of liquid. The sugar shifts against itself, movement enough for Clay to have a moment of hope; but it’s just a few grains slipping down to settle into a very slightly lower angle. “ _Mercurium Mysterium_.”

“I don’t think you’re doing it right,” Akane says from Clay’s elbow, where he’s pressed so close Clay can barely move without jamming his arm against the other boy’s shoulder. “Maybe your wand angle is wrong.”

“You think?” Clay asks. When he looks sideways Akane’s considering his wand rather than his face, his forehead creased as if with sincere thought; Clay was braced for one of Akane’s usual smirks, or the weight of lashes dragging heavy over an expression shadowed into innuendo, but Akane looks focused now instead of suggestive, as if all his attention really has been given over to the spell they’ve been trying to complete for nearly a half hour without success.

“It’s possible.” Akane reaches out to weight his fingers at Clay’s wand; Clay tenses, his wrist steadying in expectation of some force, but Akane just ghosts his touch down the smooth-polished wood to close his hold atop Clay’s grip on the handle. “Anything’s worth a try, right?”

“I guess,” Clay allows. “How am I supposed to be doing it?”

“Your hold’s a little off,” Akane tells him. His fingers are tight against Clay’s, his hold steady; Clay’s palm is going warm against the handle of his wand, his grip getting shakier just from the deliberately pressure of Akane’s hold. “It looks more like this in the textbook.” He draws Clay’s hand down, angling his wand forward until it’s nearly parallel to the surface of their desk; Clay can feel the strain of the position against his wrist, his arm protesting the sharp forward tilt of his hand. “And Professor Gorgon’s angle was up here.” A shift, a tug against Clay’s hand; Clay nearly loses his grip on his wand, has to steady out his hold as Akane urges his wrist up into a steeper angle for the line of his wand. “You might need something even steeper, though.” Akane’s hold over Clay’s hand eases, his fingertips sliding gentle across the other’s skin as he draws his touch up; Clay has to set his jaw to keep from shivering, has to tighten his hold to white-knuckled tension as Akane’s fingers slide across his skin and over the smooth surface of his wand.

“Then again, it could just be your wand itself,” Akane says, still considering. “You do polish it regularly, right?”

“Sure,” Clay says, only barely paying attention to the conversation for the angle of Akane’s fingers trailing over the smooth wood, the other’s touch so light Clay can barely feel it as weight at all. “You’re supposed to, right?”

“That’s right,” Akane says. His fingers flex, press a little more weight to back up the featherlight drag of his touch. “Maybe you’re polishing it too regularly.”

Clay blinks. “What?”

“It’s a real problem,” Akane goes on, his fingers sliding to curl into a hold around Clay’s wand. “Overpolishing, I mean.” His wrist flexes, his hold sliding up by an inch. “You have to make sure you’re getting enough _practical_ use in between solo sessions, Clay.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Clay groans, his voice cracking on self-consciousness as he tries to twist his hand away. “ _Akane_.”

“I’m just saying,” Akane continues, maintaining his grip on Clay’s wand as the other yanks it back enough to hide half-behind the shadow of their shared desk. “You should make sure you’re not overdoing it. We could have some extra study sessions if you’re not getting enough hands-on experience.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Clay snaps, dragging his wand free of Akane’s hold at last so he can press it close against the side of his hip. Akane’s grinning all over his face, his expression sultry enough to fill in whatever few gaps of imagination his words left still open-ended. “Someone’s going to _hear_ you.”

“Hear me saying what?” Akane asks, sliding in closer to pin Clay’s grip on his wand close between their thighs. Clay looks away, his whole face glowing so bright he can feel the burn like the mark of too-much sun, but Akane’s still leaning in closer, his lips almost brushing Clay’s ear with how near he is. “I’m just trying to give you some helpful tips on Transfiguration, Clay.” His knuckles weight the outside of Clay’s knee, his fingers shifting to press the suggestion of more against the other’s robes, and Clay has to shut his mouth on the whimper of heat that threatens his tongue. “What do _you_ think I’m talking about?”

“The professor’s going to see us,” Clay hisses, but he’s fighting for the frown at his mouth, and he keeps shifting his head in closer towards Akane’s before he can collect himself enough to turn away again. “We’re going to get caught.”

“Get caught doing what?” Akane asks. His hand shifts, his fingers catch at Clay’s knee, and for a moment he’s close enough for Clay to hear the rush of Akane’s breathing against his ear. “I’m just giving you a few helpful tips, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“ _Akane_ ,” Clay groans, but the name comes out as much submission as protest, and Akane hums something incoherent with heat at his ear and lets his hand slide farther to tighten just over Clay’s knee. His grip is steady, his touch hot even through the weight of Clay’s robes, and Clay knows he should push Akane away but his heart is pounding and his head is turning and Akane is humming at the soft skin just below his ear, his lips parted on the damp heat of his breathing so Clay can hear the catch of every inhale. The class is humming with the sound of other conversation, no one’s looking over at them, and Clay knows he shouldn’t but he’s turning his head anyway, his lips parting as Akane huffs a breath of amusement and slides his hand higher up Clay’s thigh, his fingers tightening against the other’s leg as he goes. Clay takes a breath, reaches for protest he knows he won’t find, and Akane’s nose is pressing hard against his jaw, Akane’s mouth is brushing his skin, and--

“Mr. Sizemore,” a voice says, and Clay nearly jumps out of his skin before he can whip his head around to look up at Professor Gorgon standing over his shoulder. She’s looking down at the two of them, an eyebrow raised and her eyes considering, and Clay’s entire face burns like it’s turning into the sun as Akane snatches his hand away from his leg. “Have you chosen to take a failing grade in class for today?”

“No ma’am,” Clay blurts, his entire body radiant with embarrassment that, unfortunately, doesn’t do much to curb the flush of arousal aching under his skin. “Sorry ma’am. I was just--”

“I was helping him,” Akane cuts in, which would be helpful if he didn’t sound so much like he’s on the verge of laughter and if his eyes weren’t so bright with amusement when Clay glances sideways at him. Akane’s hands are folded carefully on the desk in front of him, his expression absolutely composed as he gazes innocently up at the professor; Clay can feel himself blush harder just in response to Akane’s complete lack of shame. “Clay’s been struggling with the wandwork, professor, I thought maybe we would have more success working together.”

“Really,” Professor Gorgon says, and Clay doesn’t even bother looking up to see the expression that goes with that completely disbelieving tone. It’s easier to lean forward over his desk and press his glowing face against the cover of his forearms while he waits for the earth itself to open up and swallow him. “You don’t seem to be having much success with your Transfiguration yourself, Mr. Hoshi. Perhaps you ought to worry about your own wandwork before attempting to assist Mr. Sizemore with his.”

“Ah,” Akane says. “Perhaps.”

“I’m so glad we understand each other,” the professor purrs, her voice somehow attaining something half-satisfaction, half-threat that chills Clay’s blood with absolute terror at the implied repercussions if they get in trouble again. “Please, continue. I’m sure you can both manage the transfiguration by the end of class.”

“Of course,” Akane says, for both of them, since Clay hasn’t lifted his head from the desk and doesn’t intend to for the rest of his natural lifetime. “Thank you, professor.”

“Do let me know if you would like different partners,” the professor goes on. “I’d be happy to arrange such, if you prove too distracting for each other.”

There’s a pause. “No,” Akane says finally, with _far_ more hesitation on the word than Clay would like. “No, we can stay focused together.”

“See that you do,” the professor says. “And keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Hoshi.” And then she’s moving away, the sound of footsteps clicking along the aisle spelling out her retreat to the great relief of whatever self-awareness Clay has left after his attempt to burn himself to a cinder in the fire of self-conscious heat.

“Well,” Akane says finally, several seconds after the professor has moved out of earshot. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Clay turns his head against his arms, just enough that he can glare at Akane past the dark sleeve of his robe. “ _Not so bad_ ,” he repeats, his voice cracking over the words. “What is _wrong_ with you, that that’s _not so bad_?”

“Look on the bright side,” Akane tells him, glancing at Clay sideways from behind the frame of his glasses. “At least I hadn’t gotten my hands under your robes yet.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Clay groans, and turns his head back down to the cover of his arms while Akane collapses into a giggle beside him. “You’re _awful_.”

“I know,” Akane says, sounding completely unapologetic and more amused than anything else. “Come on, let’s figure out this Transfiguration.”

Clay thinks about staying down, thinks about hiding in the cover of his sleeves and never coming back out; but then Akane leans in against him to bump Clay’s shoulder with his, and Clay smiles involuntarily against his arms, and after a moment he does lift his head after all to attempt the Transfiguration again.

They both manage a passable spell by the end of class, and if Akane’s gaze lingers a little too long on the angle of Clay’s wrist as he sweeps through the motion, well, he’s not the only one with more than classwork on his mind.


	27. Opportunity

“I really appreciate your help,” Sid says from the other side of the currently immobile hippogriff. “I tried doing this by myself yesterday and it went…” He gestures with one hand to the swath of bright blue healing salve still layered over the left side of his face. “Poorly.”

“No problem.” Akane keeps his wand trained on the hippogriff and his attention on the Stunned Statue charm he’s currently maintaining, but he spares a quick glance for the color coating nearly half of Sid’s features. “Doesn’t the nurse have something that will work faster?”

“Yeah,” Sid says without looking away from the electric yellow concoction he’s currently drawing out of the knee-high container on the ground and into a syringe as long as his forearm. “Nygus wasn’t too pleased about me getting myself hurt by working alone, though. She gave me the slower stuff so I would have time to think about getting some help for next time.” He shrugs one-shouldered as he wrestles the syringe up and out of the open jar. “But it’s gotta be done today, and I wanted to do it on my own if I could. I’m not the kind of man to trouble others without cause.”

“It’s no trouble,” Akane tells him. It’s true the work is relatively mundane, just the straightforward application and maintenance of charms to hold the sickly hippogriff immobile while Sid produces various brightly-colored mixtures to work into the animal’s unwilling mouth, but Akane’s half done with his summer homework already, and without something to occupy his attention he’ll likely go back to what he usually does with the afternoons, which is attempt to read while he waits for the hours to pass before Clay’s next letter shows up. It’s not an unpleasant pursuit, usually, but it’s still nice to have something to keep him somewhat more productive for the course of the day. “Is it just you looking after the animals?”

“Yep.” Sid balances the syringe on his shoulder and takes a step in closer to the frozen hippogriff. He doesn’t ask Akane if the spell is still in place, which show of trust Akane appreciates; but Akane still looks away and back to the still shape, tightening his hold on his wand even though there’s no sign of the charm fading. “Giriko took his assistant with him for the summer so they needed someone else to hold things together. Not so bad, usually.” He hefts the syringe into place, bracing it with a hand against the bottom curve; Akane glances at the hippogriff’s head, but there’s no shift even as Sid fits the end of the syringe past the sharp points of the creature’s teeth. “Until this girl got sick, at least. It’s been a little crazy since then. Irate hippogriffs aren’t fun for anyone to deal with, even with more experience than I have.”

“His assistant could have stayed,” Akane says, distracted from his usual respect by the strain of the moment. “Instead of leaving you here to do it yourself.”

“I don’t mind,” Sid says, sliding the stopper of the syringe down to coat the inside of the hippogriff’s mouth with medication. “Justin’s spent the last handful of summers here for his apprenticeship, they were overdue for a trip anyway.” He draws the syringe back and moves away to a safer distance before lowering it and kneeling to screw the lid back on the jar of medication. “It’s a lot more manageable with your help. Thanks.”

“I’m glad I could be of use,” Akane offers politely. “Clear?”

Sid steps back another foot. “Clear.”

Akane lets the charm go slowly, easing it off so the hippogriff has time to shake her head and flutter her wings while her feet are still fixed to the ground. She doesn’t seem overly concerned by the medication or her continued immobility, and after a moment Akane lets the charm go entirely. He’s expecting a ruffle of feathers, maybe a shift of movement; but when the hippogriff turns her head to fix him with a focused stare he takes a startled step backwards without meaning to, even with Sid’s warning not to appear submissive when facing down even a sick hippogriff. His shoulders tense, his body preparing to bolt if needed; but the hippogriff just tips her head to the side as if to tease him for his concern before turning away with enough regal bearing to fit her into one of Akane’s family reunions and striding sedately across the grass towards the fence between her and the forest.

“I think she likes you,” Sid says, grinning from the position he’s taken up next to the far edge of the paddock. “Or respects you, at least, which is better than liking when it comes to hippogriffs. It’s more than she thinks of me, anyway.”

“I think she’s more tolerant than anything else,” Akane says, but he’s smiling at the compliment as he comes forward to help Sid collect the paraphernalia needed for the medication process. “Thank you, sir.”

“I just call it like I see it,” Sid says, tucking the syringe under his arm and checking the lid of the medicine once more before stepping back to let Akane pick up the weight of it. “You have a real knack for this. Better than Justin has, and he’s working as the assistant professor now. Why didn’t you take Care of Magical Creatures as one of your electives?”

“I wanted to try Divination,” Akane says without looking up. “And Clay chose Astronomy.”

“Clay,” Sid repeats, almost thoughtfully; but when Akane looks up Sid’s looking up the path to the castle, his forehead creasing on consideration of something unreadable, and when he speaks there’s no connection to the current topic Akane can see. “Have you thought at all about your career after graduation?”

Akane can feel his shoulders tense with this reminder of the decision as overdue as it is stressful, but when he speaks he manages to hold his voice level and absent any telltale strain. “No sir.”

Sid shoots him a sideways look that suggests Akane’s attempt at calm went too far the other direction and gave him away precisely because of how steady his response was, but he looks back to the castle without commenting on it, only pausing to clear his throat into consideration before he speaks. “You might think about magical creature fieldwork.”

Akane blinks. “Sir?”

“You have some skill with animals,” Sid continues. “And a steady hand with your wand, which is more valuable than a lot of creature handlers think it is. Fieldwork would let you do some research, which I hear you’re not terrible at, and there’s lots of opportunity for travel, if that appeals to you at all. It would be a lot better suited to your skills than working for the Ministry in an office, anyway.”

“Oh.” Akane’s heart is beating harder in his chest, his adrenaline spiking in time with the chill of panic sliding down his spine and crawling out under his skin. Sid’s words are flattering, to be sure, the idea not unappealing in the general sense; but the implication of travel, of being away from a set location, is like ice pressed clammy and cold against his skin to chase away any of the warm pleasure that comes with the compliment. It’s as if he’s watching the golden glow of an imagined future dissolve right in front of him, as if Sid’s words are a personal attack on the teacup-sized apartment and the bright of Clay’s waiting smile that Akane has set his heart on. “Sir, I’m very flattered by the suggestion, but--”

“There’s also the fact that field researchers work in teams,” Sid continues, still without looking away from the front of the castle. “In case something goes wrong, you know, you need someone there to watch your back or provide support as needed. A lot of researchers trade out partners just so they don’t get sick of each other but sometimes you’ll get married couples who are interested enough in the same topic to go out together, and they’re some of the best out there.” Sid clears his throat with less subtlety than otherwise. “I don’t suppose your Mr. Sizemore has any particular interest in magical creatures?”

Akane’s head whips sideways to stare at the professor. For a moment he can’t think at all, can’t find anything in his head but a brief flicker of appreciation for that _your_ pressed so near to Clay’s name. Then Sid glances back at him, and Akane realizes he’s stopped walking, and he takes a few jogging steps forward to catch back up, his cheeks burning with a little embarrassment and a lot of happiness spreading out to fill his veins with a glow like sunlight to chase away the shadows of an uncertain future from his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I’ll ask him.”

“You should,” Sid says with calm certainty. “I think it might be a perfect opportunity for you both.”

Akane thinks so too.


	28. Heat

It’s cold on the roof of the Astronomy Tower. The open air runs to chill after sunset, getting to shivering temperatures even in the warmest months at school; now, with October fading and November on the way, it’s frigid after dark, the air icy with the suggestion of snow even when it’s too dry to allow for actual precipitation. Clay wears multiple layers when he and Akane meet to work on their homework for Professor Yumi’s class, and brings his wand in case they need a warming charm for cold fingers; Akane generally arrives with one already in place, plus a thermos of tea he managed to persuade the kitchens to grant him for evening. It’s enough to keep them reasonably comfortable for an hour or so, at least, enough to make a start on the assignment they have to work on; and an hour is about as much patience as Akane can ever manage before he attempts more inventive methods of keeping them both warm.

Clay doesn’t offer protest. Most of their homework is done -- they’ve gotten better and better at working faster rather than longer to get their assignments completed -- and it really is cold, even with the radiance of the charm Akane cast over Clay’s gloves as soon as they stepped out onto the chill of the roof. With gloves and scarves Clay thinks it would be quite comfortable; but under the circumstances, with his scarf fallen to tangle with Akane’s on the floor under them and his gloves lost somewhere he didn’t pay attention to, the bite of the wind is just cold enough to urge him in as close as he can get to the heat of Akane’s skin and the comfortable warmth caught in the other’s clothes.

“Should we go inside?” Clay asks some fifteen minutes after they entirely abandoned their focus on the sky in favor of attention to each other. He’s braced up on one elbow, his hand fisted in the front of Akane’s robes to hold the other still while the fingers of his free hand catch and wind into the heavy fall of Akane’s loose hair; Akane’s eyes are shut, his head canted to the side, his whole expression gone slack with distracting heat as Clay’s touch slides against the back of his neck. “It would be warmer.”

“I know,” Akane says, his voice dipping into a purr Clay thinks might actually be unintentional, this time. It still goes through him like fire, still shudders a pleasant weight down the whole length of his spine. Akane has a hand braced at his hip, his fingers gripping tight to hold Clay steady even with the weight of his glove still on; the other is working open the fastenings on the front of Clay’s robes to seek out the weight of his shirt underneath. “We couldn’t do this inside, though.”

“No,” Clay admits. When he leans in Akane tips to meet him, his lips parting onto heat even before Clay has fit the weight of another kiss against the other’s mouth. Akane tastes like the tea from the thermos he brought, his tongue clinging to the steam of the liquid as much as the flavor; Clay draws the kiss long, catching heat from Akane’s mouth until Akane makes a faint, low sound in the back of his throat and tips backwards to fall atop their discarded scarves. Clay follows him, his balance giving way as he topples to land mostly atop the other boy; Akane blinks up at him, his lips parted on the soft steam of his breath and his hair falling back to leave the star marking his eye clear to see by moonlight. Clay is caught for a moment by the dark of Akane’s lashes behind the shine of his glasses, by the flush of color across Akane’s cheeks and staining his mouth to red. The air around them has the bite of winter on it, he can feel it threatening discomfort against the back of his neck and pressing against the half-open front of his robes; but Akane’s lashes flutter, and his chin tips up in unstated request for another kiss, and Clay’s whole body glows hot with affection and the sharp edge of the unsatisfied desire that wants Akane’s skin against his, Akane’s hands on him, Akane’s whole body pressed as close to his as they can get.

“Here is fine,” he says, and he’s leaning in while Akane is still smiling into his reply, closing his eyes to the distractions of vision so he can lose himself to the other’s mouth again. Akane’s fingers catch at his robe to work the fabric open farther, but pressed together as they are Clay barely feels the chill of the air cutting closer to his skin. It’s worth it, anyway, when Akane gets his shirt untucked enough to slide his fingers up and under the loosened hem; Clay shudders at the contact, his whole body trembling through reaction wholly separate from the chill in the air, and Akane purrs something incomprehensible and hot against his mouth and slides his hand sideways and around to Clay’s back to press his touch against the curve of the other’s spine. Clay’s fingers tighten to a hold on Akane’s hair, his breathing catches in his throat, and Akane tenses his fingers, pressing the edges of his nails against Clay’s skin and dragging across to trail friction in the wake of his touch. Clay’s shoulders tense, his skin prickles into heat, and he doesn’t mean to groan but that’s the sound spilling from his lips, that’s the way the electricity that runs up his spine chooses to give itself voice. Akane gasps for air under him, hissing on the effort of his inhale as he arches off the floor of the Tower, and Clay presses against him without thinking, letting the weight of his body pin the other down as Akane’s fingers drag gentle friction over his skin. It’s almost painful, might be if Akane were pushing harder or Clay were less radiant with heat; but as it is there’s nothing but shuddering sensation, a sparking force that Clay can feel run up the length of his spine to stall to pleasure at the back of his thoughts. He whines a breath, slides his fingers farther into Akane’s hair, and Akane curves up under him again, pinning them against each other as he catches Clay’s mouth with his. There’s the drag of his tongue, the catch of his teeth, and Clay’s head is spinning, his attention to their surroundings dissolving as Akane shifts under and against him. It’s freezing cold, he can feel the chill sliding down his spine and creeping under the edges of his undone clothes; but he’s feverishly calculating how long a warming charm lasts, wondering if they couldn’t take turns casting them on each other to stave off the chill while they shed some of the tangled layers of fabric between them. Akane’s skin is warm, Clay knows, Clay thinks sometimes it’s the hottest thing he’s ever felt, and don’t people sometimes deal with hypothermia with skin-to-skin contact? Surely they won’t get dangerously cold with enough charms, and really all he needs would be to get Akane’s robes open, to get his hands in and under the other’s clothes like Akane’s fingers are under his, like Akane’s touch is slipping down the curve of his spine to dip just under the waistband of his pants. Clay feels radiant, feels like he’s burning everywhere Akane touches him; and then “ _Oh_ ,” comes a startled feminine voice, and Clay’s head comes up in immediate, reflexive response before he’s even processed the implication of having a speaker at all.

They have something of an audience. It’s only two people, thankfully; but the familiar shock of white hair and the pale blond pigtails of the boy and the girl standing in the doorway more than make up for their numbers with recognizability.

“Fuck,” Akane says, very softly.

“Not _again_ ,” Clay groans with significantly more volume.

“ _Clay_ ,” Maka says, her voice skipping to shrillness on the force of her embarrassment. “Akane. I. Oh. What are you _doing_ here?”

“What does it look like they’re doing?” Soul drawls from behind her. Maka’s blush deepens, spreading so dark across her cheeks that Clay can see it even from the distance to the doorway; Soul looks more resigned than embarrassed as he lifts a hand to ruffle through his hair. “Come on Maka, let’s leave them to it.”

“I didn’t know you were...” Maka says, still crimson. “I mean. Not that there’s anything wrong with--I don’t _mind_. How long have you...?”

“Oh come _on_ ,” Soul groans. “How have you not known, I thought Slytherins were supposed to be good at reading people. Or is it just you that’s terrible at it?”

Maka rounds on him, her mouth drawing hard into a scowl. “I am _not_ terrible at it,” she hisses at him. “You think you’re so smart, like you knew either.”

“Sure,” Soul says. “They’ve been together for years, Maka, I don’t know how you didn’t notice.” He grabs at her hand as she levels a finger at him in prelude to poking at his chest, drawing her wrist aside as he takes a step back. “Let’s go.” He looks past Maka to Clay and Akane still in a tangle on the Tower floor. “Have fun, don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.” And he’s moving, retreating back out of the doorway and dragging Maka behind him; she’s caught up in defending her honor, barely pausing to call back “Sorry! Really, sorry!” before letting the door slam shut behind them.

“ _God_ ,” Clay groans, letting his head drop down to land heavily at Akane’s shoulder as the tension of horrified self-consciousness sags out of his spine. “When are we _ever_ going to get any privacy?”

“This is getting ridiculous,” Akane agrees. “At this rate I’m not going to lose my virginity to you until after graduation.”

Clay can feel his face light up in a wave of embarrassment. “Oh my _god_ ,” he blurts without lifting his head. “You can’t say things like that, Akane.”

“I just did,” Akane purrs at him. “Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t thought about having me spread out across your bed desperate and begging for your co--”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Clay gasps, pushing up onto his elbow in a rush of frantic horror to clap a hand over Akane’s mouth. The attempt only muffles Akane’s words, it doesn’t stop them, and it does nothing at all to temper the shadows behind his eyes when he flutters his lashes at Clay. Clay’s face is burning with embarrassment, his self-consciousness only compounded by the fact that the image Akane’s words painted has completely renewed the arousal that had faded due to their interruption and by the fact that he’s very sure Akane can feel it pressing hard against his hip. “You can’t--don’t say things like that!”

Clay can feel Akane smile against his palm; he’s still grinning when Clay lets his hand go. “Fine,” Akane says, his voice submissive but his eyes still dark. “I’m still going to think about them though.”

Clay rolls his eyes. “Of course you are.”

Akane laughs, spilling amusement to the cold of the air as he extricates his hand from Clay’s clothes and pushes up on his elbow to tip in for a kiss. Clay shuts his eyes in surrender to the warmth, loses his attention for a moment against the soft sweet of Akane’s mouth; he feels like he’s glowing by the time Akane pulls back, like his lashes have gone heavy until he has to struggle to blink himself back to focus as Akane retreats for another breath of the chilled air.

“I wonder what they wanted,” Clay says as he blinks, his attention wandering with dizzy inattention over the distraction of being interrupted. “Maka and Soul, I mean.”

Akane raises an eyebrow at him, his mouth twitching on amusement. “You don’t know?” Clay frowns at him and Akane laughs, his voice breaking free into a giggle for a brief moment of unfettered delight. “I imagine they were here for the same reason most people come to the Astronomy Tower.” Clay blinks at him, not following the logic, and Akane leans in to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “The same reason _we’re_ here.”

“What?” Clay says, distracted for a moment by the weight of Akane’s lips against his; and then “ _Oh_ ,” shocked even out of the temporary haze of Akane kissing him by the abruptness of the revelation. “They’re--really? Finally?”

“Think so,” Akane says. “Too bad we got here first. They have a lot of tension they need to work through, I think.”

Clay huffs a laugh. “Like you do?”

“Like we _both_ do.” Akane reaches out to catch his fingers into Clay’s hair; his hand slides across the other’s scalp, his touch leaving a trail of heat in its wake. “Don’t we?”

Clay takes a deep breath of air, feels the chill of it turn over inside his chest and convert smoothly into radiant heat before he breathes it out in a rush of steam white and hazy against the dark night.

“Yeah,” he says, and leans back in for Akane’s mouth again. “We do.”

Akane’s smile is warm against the weight of his lips.


	29. Need

“Where are we _going_?” Clay asks for the third time since Akane led him out of the Hufflepuff common room. He’s blindfolded with one of Akane’s ties -- an extra one Akane brought with him, he’s been nothing if not thorough -- and if they’ve gotten a few sideways glances and more knowing smirks from the other students they pass, no one has said anything aloud, and Clay’s lack of sight has saved him from any of the accompanying embarrassment that would come with the others’ expressions. Akane doesn’t care; he can’t stop smiling, hasn’t been able to since he left his common room a half hour ago, and their classmates can think whatever they like about what he and Clay are going to do.

For once, they won’t even be wrong.

“Seriously, Akane,” Clay protests as Akane pulls him back into a pivot to walk him back down a much-crossed hallway. “We’re just going back and forth, you’re not even trying to get me lost anymore.”

“I told you I’m not trying to get you lost,” Akane tells him, not for the first time. “Just keep thinking about what I told you.”

“I _have_ been,” Clay tells him, his mouth setting into the soft of a frown as his cheeks go to pink. “It’s kind of hard, you know, I don’t know who might be watching.”

“It’s okay if it’s hard,” Akane tells him in his most off-hand tone, “it’s not like your robes show anything anyway.” It takes a moment for Clay to parse this, as Akane knew it would; he’s just gasping an inhale of embarrassed outrage when Akane reaches up to catch at the other’s shoulder and stop his forward movement.

“Here,” Akane says, pushing to turn the other around to face the wall of the hallway. Akane steps behind Clay and reaches up to unfasten the knot of fabric set against the pale tangle of the other’s hair; Clay is still breathless on whatever protest he wanted to offer to Akane’s last statement when Akane slides the blindfold free and reaches out over Clay’s shoulder to gesture. “For you.”

It takes Clay a moment to react. Akane lets his arm fall slack over Clay’s shoulder, lets his hand drape over the other’s chest to toy with the top edge of his robes; it’s just as he’s catching his fingertips under the angle of the button that Clay finds voice to say, “A door.”

“Yes,” Akane says.

“You took me all this way _blindfolded_ and thinking about--” Clay cuts himself off sharply but it’s not fast enough to stop the flicker of imagination in Akane’s mind or the tug of the smile that drags at his mouth. “--For a _door_?”

“Well, obviously not _just_ a door,” Akane informs him. “You should probably open it, you know, Clay.”

Clay turns his head to glance back sharply at Akane. “I don’t think I should trust you enough to open a strange door in the middle of a strange hallway, Akane.”

“None of my surprises are ever bad,” Akane tells him. “You always like them in the end, don’t pretend that you don’t.” He slides his arm free of his hold around Clay’s neck and around to his back, where he can spread his fingers wide and bracing against the other’s shoulders. “You should open it.”

“Oh god,” Clay whimpers, a last helpless protest as much resignation as concern, because he’s stepping across the hallway to the door set all alone against the whole length of the wall. He hesitates a moment before touching his fingers to the handle; then he grabs at the shining metal, and turns the knob sharply, and pulls the door open all in one movement.

Akane doesn’t move. He stays where he is on the other side of the hallway, watching Clay’s shoulders shift into slack surprise at the interior; it’s not until Clay breathes “ _Akane_ ” in tones of breathless shock that Akane smiles from the other side of the hall and steps forward over the distance.

“There was a note on my bed last night,” he explains, pressing in close against Clay’s back so he can duck his head and find space enough for his mouth at the back of the other’s neck, between the soft gold of his hair and the dark collar of his robes. “No signature but it had to be from someone in my house, no one else could have gotten it there. I’ll have to thank Kim later.”

“How do you know it was Kim?” Clay asks, still enraptured by the inside of the room.

“She was remarkably calm yesterday,” Akane tells the back of Clay’s neck, punctuating with featherlight kisses against the other’s skin. “And Jackie was all but glowing when I saw her in the Great Hall. They must have gotten lucky to find this place. In more ways than one.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, but he sounds distracted, and when he moves it’s to push the door open wider so he can take a step forward into the room. “Must have.”

Akane reaches out to catch the weight of the door as Clay lets it go, holding it open while the other takes the lead into the space. “I wanted to surprise you with it,” he says, stepping over the entrance to follow Clay inside. “I checked it out earlier today just to make sure it wasn’t a prank but it worked just like the note said it would.” He pauses inside the doorway to glance up and around them; there’s the pressure of amusement against the inside of his chest, laughter struggling to break free of his lips. “I guess it’s a little different with two people together, though.”

“Huh?” Clay looks back, finally, turning away from the soft golden glow filling the room. “What do you mean?”

Akane ducks his chin towards the furniture dominating the room. “The bed was the same,” he says. “It was less, uh. Well-lit, though. The couch wasn’t there.” He lets the door swing shut behind him and leans back against the support at his shoulders. “There were a lot more.... _toys_ on the bed this morning.”

Clay looks back. “ _Akane_ ,” he gasps, sounding equal parts scandalized and intrigued. It makes Akane grin, delight fizzing so hot and electric in his veins that he can barely hold back the threat of laughter at his lips; when he looks back to the bed it’s to duck his head in a nod to acknowledge the smooth dark of the sheets and the promise of comfort offered by the depth of the mattress.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he says, feeling his heart speed to frantic excitement in his chest as he leans against the door. “We still have everything we need, right? A bed, each other, and--” catching at metal with his fingers and pushing until the latch _clicks_ audibly behind him, “--a _locked door_.”

Akane is braced for a flush, for Clay’s whole expression to collapse to embarrassment the way it always does when he catches up with Akane’s barely-veiled suggestions to push their relationship forward. He’s expecting a yelp, the beginnings of protest he’ll have to cut off with a kiss or the press of his fingers; all this he’s encountered before, it’s as much part of this interaction as if it’s the steps of some established dance. But Clay’s gaze drops to the door, where Akane’s fingers have promised them the privacy they have been so desperately in need of for so long, and if his cheeks flush his lashes dip too, his mouth coming open on a brief, startled groan of heat that goes straight through Akane like electricity. Akane’s spine arches, his body tenses against the rush of answering fire that surges through his veins, and then Clay looks up and says “ _Akane_ ” and Akane is moving before his name is well clear of Clay’s lips, striding forward and across the floor to reach out and grab at whatever of the other’s clothing he can. Clay is just as quick; they meet in the middle of the floor, hands catching at clothes even before their mouths come together, and then Clay is gasping friction against Akane’s parted lips and Akane’s dragging the fastenings of Clay’s robes open and everything is a rush, both of them moving with frantic speed as if they have a few minutes to themselves rather than a few hours. Clay’s robes come open under Akane’s pulling hands, Clay’s fingers catch and push at the weight of Akane’s hair; Akane’s glasses are sliding off-center but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t need to be able to see clearly to find his way down the smooth line of Clay’s tie to the front of the other’s pants.

“This first,” he says, the words going hot and unintelligible against the press of Clay’s mouth frantic and desperate against his. “Clay, do you know how many times I’ve--”

“You too,” Clay protests, but his hands are slower, his motion less practiced; his fingers have caught in Akane’s hair, his touch keeps stalling to catch Akane’s head between his palms and hold the other still against the heat of his mouth while Akane is twisting denim free of button and zipper alike in pursuit of getting Clay’s clothes at least minimally open. Clay jerks at the weight of Akane’s palm digging in against him, his hips bucking forward involuntarily, and Akane’s whole body feels like it’s glowing, he feels as if he could light up a room with the incandescence hot in his veins from Clay’s touch.

“After,” Akane says, and he’s dropping to his knees without pausing, while he’s still fumbling open the front of Clay’s clothes. Clay makes another startled sound, something short and hot and broken-off around possible protest, but Akane doesn’t look up, even when Clay’s fingers dig into his hair into the beginning of fists around the weight of it. His focus is all for the fabric giving way under his touch, for the jeans sliding open for him, and then he’s dragging Clay’s clothes down and off his hips and there’s nothing between them anymore, just Clay hot and hard and flushed with the same want coursing through Akane’s veins in place of blood.

“Oh god,” Clay says, “Akane.”

“Clay,” Akane breathes without looking up. “You’re _beautiful_ ” and he’s leaning in, opening his mouth and catching Clay’s cock against his lips without any hesitation anywhere in him. Clay _groans_ , the sound so low and resonant Akane has the brief thought to wonder if the room is soundproof as well as so conveniently equipped in every other way; but then he loses track of caring about those details, because Clay is in his mouth and sliding back over his tongue, and Akane’s entire body is tingling electric with heat at the awareness that his lips are against Clay’s skin, that Clay’s cock is pressing hot against his mouth, that those breathless gasping inhales Clay is taking over him and the drag of those desperate handholds in Akane’s hair are his doing, his causing just by the press of his lips and the drag of his tongue.

“ _Oh_ ,” Clay offers, the sound lower in the back of his throat than Akane has ever heard from him before. “Ah--Akane, I--I have to--” Akane shifts his tongue, and licks against the head of Clay’s cock in his mouth, and Clay chokes off coherency as his fingers tense and his body shakes, his legs trembling until Akane can feel it running through the steadying hold he has at Clay’s hip. “ _Akane_.”

Akane pulls back. His lips are salty when he licks them, bitter and heavy with unfamiliar heat, with the warm richness of Clay’s bare skin against his. He feels dizzy, like he’s stood up too quickly after lying down; when he looks up he has to blink hard to draw his vision back to clarity. “What?”

“Akane,” Clay says again, tightening his fingers on Akane’s hair as if to underline his point. His eyes are half-lidded, his lips parted on the rush of his breathing; the flush across his cheeks looks like nothing but arousal, now. “I can’t...I have to sit down.”

“That’s fine,” Akane says. “Just. Sit down.”

Clay huffs a short, breathless laugh. “Okay,” he says, and lets his hold on Akane’s hair go so he can stumble backwards towards the bed behind him. Akane follows without getting up, sliding forward to follow Clay’s movement as the other topples back to sit at the edge of the dark sheets; it’s an opportunity to strip the other’s pants off, to pull some of the layers of fabric off to bare heat-flushed skin, but Akane doesn’t have the patience for that right now. Clay has barely fallen back against the bed before he’s sliding in closer, pressing his knees between the space of Clay’s feet against the floor and reaching back out to replace his hold at the other’s hips. Clay groans again when Akane’s mouth slides over him, his throat straining as his head tilts back on the first rush of heat, and Akane can feel the sound vibrate all down his spine and ache hot in his blood even as he takes Clay farther back in his mouth.

It’s an awkward angle. Akane thinks there’s all kinds of things he would change, all kinds of things he _will_ change, next time. It would be nice to have more of Clay’s skin to slide his hands over, would be nice to have access to the whole inside line of Clay’s angled-open thighs instead of just what few inches of friction Akane can gain under the loose hem of the other’s shirt. Akane would like to be wearing less himself, would like to be free of the restraint of his robes and the knot of his tie tight against his throat; but that’s for later, that’s for any number of _next times_ he’s already planning on having, because right now the absolute most important thing is the way Clay’s breathing is straining in his chest and the way Clay has one hand braced behind him to hold himself up and the other fisted hard against the fall of Akane’s hair. He’s trying to be gentle, Akane can feel the concern in the shift of Clay’s fingers every time he thinks to loosen his grip; but Akane keeps shifting his tongue, keeps licking out over the texture of Clay’s cock against his lips, and Clay jerks with every pass Akane makes, his fingers flexing and his legs trembling as his breathing breaks apart into tiny, desperate gasps. Akane’s jaw aches, his lips are burning, his tongue is full of salt and bitter and heat; but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t _want_ to pull away, and even when Clay chokes on an inhale and offers a warning of “Akane, I’m…” Akane is more disappointed that this is about to be over than relieved. He tightens his lips against Clay, sucks hard as he presses his tongue close against the head of Clay’s cock, and Clay jerks against him, voice breaking over a half-formed “ _Akane_ ” as his cock twitches at Akane’s lips and spills heat over the other’s tongue. Akane’s throat closes on the bitter, his tongue protests the taste of the slick salt over it; but Clay is groaning over him, and Akane doesn’t want to pull away, so he closes his eyes and swallows hard to clear his mouth instead. Clay whimpers a faint sound of disbelief, his cock offers a last spurt of bitter salt against Akane’s tongue; and then his fingers ease in the other’s hair, his touch going gentle with relief, and Akane draws back as slowly as he can manage. Clay still shudders with the friction, still gasps breathless at the movement; but then Akane is rocking back over his knees, and lifting a hand to draw against the damp of his lips, and Clay’s hand is sliding through his hair instead of making a fist of the strands.

“ _God_ ,” Clay manages, his voice cracking in the back of his throat as Akane swallows his mouth clear again. “Akane, that.” He tips his head forward as Akane looks up; Clay blinks twice to clear his vision, and even then his gaze drifts over Akane’s face like it can’t quite steady itself enough to land to stillness. “You.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed,” Akane purrs without getting to his feet. His heart is pounding hard against the inside of his chest, his breathing catching to desperation on how hot all his skin is flushed; but he doesn’t want to move away from this, right now, with the taste of Clay still clinging bitter to his tongue and the bright of the other’s gaze hazed over by pleasure as he looks down at Akane. Akane licks against the corner of his mouth to taste the salt there, and Clay’s lashes flutter, his throat working on a whimper that goes through Akane like an open flame at his skin. “You have _no_ idea how long I’ve thought about doing that.”

“I think,” Clay starts, and then has to pause and swallow himself back to clarity of speech. “I think I might have some idea.”

Akane’s eyebrows jump up; he can feel his mouth quirk on the threat of a laugh. “ _Really_ ,” he says, and slides his hands down to Clay’s knees to brace himself so he can push to his feet. Clay looks up to follow him, his lips parting as if in expectation of a kiss, and Akane can’t resist the temptation to lean in and take one, slow and warm against the overheated gasp of Clay’s breathing. He wonders if Clay can taste himself on Akane’s tongue. “You too, then?”

“Yeah,” Clay says, his eyes shut and voice dropping to shadow to match the weight of his lashes against his cheeks. His hands are winding around Akane’s hips, his knees angling wider as his touch pulls the other in closer. “I could. Uh. I could show you.”

Akane didn’t think he _could_ get any harder than he already is, was sure the last fifteen minutes of anticipation and action were enough to bring him as trembling close to the edge as possible. He has to brace himself at Clay’s shoulder as the other’s words prove him wrong, has to hold his balance against the other boy for a long moment while he waits for the dizzy rush of heat to give him back his vision.

“Not that I’m not _completely_ interested in that idea,” he says, aiming for casual interest and hearing his words come out breathless and shaky, “but we’ve got this whole bed here and I’ve already got other plans in mind.” He takes another breath. His vision clears slightly. “I’d hardly do justice to my house if I weren’t well-prepared.”

“Oh my god,” Clay says, his voice trembling in the back of his throat. “Do you want to…?”

“Yeah,” Akane says. “Unless you don’t think you can--”

“No,” Clay says at once, the answer coming so fast Akane is left with his mouth still open on the unfinished end of his sentence. Clay pauses and coughs himself through audible embarrassment, but when he speaks again it’s just as quick as the first statement. “No, I, uh, I definitely can. Again.”

Akane doesn’t mean to laugh. It’s not at Clay’s expense; it’s just happiness, anticipation too bright and hot along his spine to be held back by self-restraint. “Okay,” he says, and steps back from Clay sitting at the edge of the bed so he can reach for his robes instead. “Just give me a few minutes to get ready.”

Clay blinks at him. His hair is rumpled over his head, his eyes half-lidded still with the lingering shadows of the pleasure Akane drew from him; it makes Akane’s heart beat faster, catches his breath as he unfastens his robes and lets them slide back and off his shoulders. Clay stares at the motion, his attention tracking the movement with distracted focus; it’s not until Akane is tugging at the knot of his tie that Clay shakes his head and brings himself back to attention with a visible effort.

“Wait,” he say. “‘Get ready.’ You mean, like.”

“Yeah.” Akane slides his tie free of his collar and tosses it to the side to drape over the end of the couch -- apparently the addition to the furniture was more helpful than he expected it would be -- before starting in on undoing the row of buttons down the front of his shirt. “I can take care of everything, if you want.”

“Oh.” Clay blinks as Akane slides his hands free of the cuffs of his sleeves; his gaze flickers down to the other’s undershirt, clinging against the thin of the fabric with an attention Akane is very sure is reflexive rather than deliberate. “You know what to do?”

“Of course.” Akane catches at the edge of his undershirt to strip it up and over his head; it’s out-of-order, or at least different than his usual undressing routine, but it’s worth it for the way Clay’s lashes dip and the way Clay’s lips part on unvoiced appreciation. It makes Akane’s breathing catch, makes his skin flush warmer like his blood is rising to the surface in answer to Clay’s gaze on him, and when he reaches to unfasten his belt it’s with his hands trembling very slightly from heat more than nerves. “I’ve been doing research.”

“Research?” Clay repeats, his gaze trailing Akane’s fingers as the other slides his belt free to toss over the couch and toes his shoes off. “Like in the library?”

“Yes,” Akane tells him. “I just stopped by the front desk and told her I wanted to have sex with my boyfriend and needed some tips. The librarian is _very_ helpful.”

“Oh,” Clay says, looking as distracted as he sounds while Akane slides his slacks off and catches at the edge of his socks to shed those as well. “Yeah.” Akane smirks at the pale of Clay’s hair, waits for understanding to hit; it’s just as he’s hooking his thumbs inside the edge of his boxers that Clay’s expression goes blank with comprehension and his attention jumps up to Akane’s face. “ _What_?”

“I’m joking,” Akane tells him. “You’re  a seventh-year, Clay, shouldn’t you be less gullible by now?”

“You shouldn’t tease me,” Clay protests, his face creasing into the beginning of frustration even under the flush of heat suffusing all his features.

“I’m not teasing you,” Akane says, and pushes his boxers down off his hips to strip himself bare for the light and Clay’s gaze at once. Clay’s focus drops instantly, following the movement and stalling at bare skin, and Akane can feel his whole body prickle with self-awareness, as if every inch of his skin is coming alight and glowing under Clay’s attention. “It’s not teasing if you follow through.”

“That’s--” Clay starts, and then stops as Akane takes a step forward, leaving his clothes where he’s dropped them over the couch so he can come closer to the bed. Akane’s heart is pounding in his chest, stealing the calm of his breathing and sparking electricity up his spine with every step he takes closer; he takes the far route around the bed instead of resuming his position in front of Clay, trying to maintain something like a normal pace with Clay staring at him as if he’s never seen Akane before. He hasn’t, Akane supposes, not to this extent; the thought just makes him breathe harder, just makes his cock ache with another surge of heat as he reaches out for the drawer in the nightstand alongside the bed.

“This’ll only take a minute,” he says as he finds the same bottle that was there when he first checked the room earlier today, with his heart pounding on anticipation and his breath catching in his throat. There’s still anticipation in him, he’s still tense all through his body with awareness of what is to come; but it’s closer, now, taking on the near-focus clarity of expectation as he kneels against the sheets to shift his knees wide and bracing on the mattress before opening the lid of the bottle so he can spill slick liquid over his fingers. “Will that be enough time for you?”

Clay laughs, the sound so short and broken-off it’s almost more a huff of an exhale than it is the sound of amusement. “I don’t really need any more time than this, actually.”

Akane’s attention drifts sideways, away from the shine of light off slippery fingers and to the tangle he made of Clay’s clothes. His breathing catches, his cock jerks, and when he looks down again it’s with intention straining across the whole breadth of his shoulders. “Good,” he says. “I don’t have to go slow, then.” He moves fast, suiting words to actions while Clay is still gasping an inhale behind him; his fingers slide slick across his skin, the motion familiar enough from private practice sessions that he doesn’t have to devote much thought to the action. It’s easy to catch his fingers against himself, a simple angle of his wrist to push past the resistance and into his body; the friction is minimal, the movement habitual and straightforward, and then Akane tips his head to look sideways and Clay is staring at him, his eyes half-lidded and lips parted on unconscious heat. Akane is very sure Clay doesn’t realize he’s staring, can guess from the other’s face that he isn’t actually conscious of much at all besides the rush of his breathing coming fast in his chest; it makes Akane’s cheeks flush with satisfied self-awareness, curves his spine into a more deliberate arch, and when he speaks it’s to say “Aren’t those clothes a little restricting?” loud enough to startle Clay out of his reverie.

“What?” Clay starts; and then, with his briefly-forgotten flush returning in full force, “ _Oh_.” Akane laughs, amusement no less sincere in his throat for how tense his chest feels, and Clay slides off the edge of the bed so he can start stripping his own clothes off. He makes much less of a show of it than Akane did -- the whole process is far more focused on speed than grace -- but Akane doesn’t care, not when the rapidity with which Clay is wrestling free of his clothes gives him something of a deadline to work towards. He braces a hand against the bed instead, steadies himself over his knees and the support of his hand, and while Clay is stripping his tie free of his collar and fumbling free of his shoes Akane is working himself open around the stretch of his fingers, pressing as far into himself as he can while his whole body radiates heat like he’s trying to burn off the leading edge of anticipation. He doesn’t think it helps much -- by the time Clay is turning back to the bed to rejoin him Akane feels warmer if anything, can’t tell if it’s self-consciousness or the desperate edge of arousal burning across his collarbones and doesn’t care, not with Clay blushing into embarrassment as he comes back over the bed to join him.

“Here,” Akane says, easing his fingers back and out of himself and reaching for Clay’s shoulder in the same motion. Clay’s staring at him, his attention wandering down over Akane’s bare skin like he’s not sure where to look, like he can’t remember how to focus, but that’s okay; Akane has thought about this, has _dreamed_ about this, has framed this over and over in his head until he doesn’t have to think through the way his hand fits at Clay’s shoulder or the way his hold bears the other back down to the bed. “Lie down.”

“Oh,” Clay says, tipping back obediently even as he reaches to catch at Akane’s elbow and hold his balance as he goes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Akane says, and that’s all he can manage for coherency because Clay is lying across the sheets in front of him, his summer-tan skin flushed to red all across his face and the top of his shoulders but bare nonetheless, spread out for Akane’s appreciation over the dark soft of the unfamiliar sheets. “Right there.”

Clay wasn’t kidding about being ready again. His cock is flushed as hard as it was when they came in, with nothing but the lingering bitter at the back of Akane’s tongue to speak to the first round they started with; the thought makes Akane smile, makes him touch his tongue to his lips with the memory, but much though a second round is tempting it will have to wait until the next chance they have to monopolize the possibilities of this room because right now Akane is _finally_ going to get what he’s been desperate for for years. He slides closer across the bed, presses one knee flush against Clay’s hip so he can swing the other up and over, and Clay gasps an inhale and reaches to grab hard at Akane’s hips as Akane settles himself in to straddle the other. Clay is hot when Akane reaches for him, flushed warm as he closes slick fingers around the other’s length, and he jerks at the contact, his hips bucking up against Akane’s hand as his exhale turns over into a moan in the back of his throat. Akane’s whole body tenses, his heart skipping until it’s hard to breathe, and when he moves it’s to rock up over his knees and brace himself into position over Clay’s hips.

“Oh my god,” Clay says, his voice breaking in the back of his throat as his fingers tense against Akane’s skin. “Akane.”

“Yeah,” Akane says, watching the flush of Clay’s cock under his fingers, watching the shadow against the inside of his thighs, watching their bodies come into alignment as he rocks forward over Clay’s hips. “I’m going to.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, and Akane tips himself back and down, his legs trembling with the effort of the angle as he moves. Clay presses against him, hot and slick and hard; and then Akane looks up, his gaze coming into focus on the wide-eyed anticipation in Clay’s expression, and he lets himself slide down onto the other’s cock in one decided movement. Clay groans, his voice skipping up and then breaking off lower than Akane’s ever heard it before, but Akane is too distracted to offer even a token attempt at teasing the other for his reaction; he can’t recall how to breathe, can’t find air to fill his lungs with the heat of Clay’s cock filling him instead.

“Oh,” Clay gasps. “Akane.”

 _Clay_ , Akane says, or intends to say, except his voice stalls in his throat and comes out as a whimper instead, the most sound he can manage with the pressure stretching him open as he rocks himself backwards to take Clay deeper into him. Clay’s fingers tighten at his hips, his thumbs slip against Akane’s skin, and Akane tips forward without thinking, bracing a hand over Clay’s shoulder to hold himself steady as he moves himself slowly through another stroke. Clay’s staring at him, his eyes wide and lips parted; his cheeks are flushed, clinging to the lingering heat of self-consciousness and undoing it into hazy arousal instead, and Akane is very, very sure he’s never seen anything so beautiful.

“Clay,” he says again, managing to bring the sound to audibility this time, and leans in closer against Clay under him as he shifts his weight into a careful-slow stroke. The pressure isn’t easing but the friction is, the heat of Clay inside him is sliding back from the edge of too-much and over into a radiant pressure instead, something strange and foreign but warmer than anything Akane’s ever felt before, like he’s being lit up from the inside out with each movement he takes to slide himself back for another thrust. Clay’s eyes look darker from this close, Akane can see how wide and dark his pupils have gone with the heat in his veins; when Clay blinks Akane can watch the drag of his lashes over each other, can see the uncertain rise of their weight as Clay turns his head in a reflexive plea for a kiss. Akane can’t refuse him, wouldn’t want to even if he could; he turns his head to match Clay instead, fits his mouth to the part of Clay’s lips and shuts his eyes to let the heat of his movement overwhelm the whole of his awareness.

They find a rhythm together without Akane having to think about it, the draw and stroke of their bodies aligning with the same natural ease Akane always suspected they would. Akane draws his weight up, feeling the pressure inside him ease until he’s starting to ache for more, until he can feel the effort of movement flexing hard in his legs; and Clay rocks up to meet him, his hips thrusting up as Akane lets himself slide back down with all the breathless force of anticipation behind the action. The pressure is so much, almost too much; but Akane keeps moving, and Clay might be breathing hard under him but he’s moving too, finding and holding the rhythm of his action with the reflexive ease that he so often brings to physical motion. Akane’s tensing with every upwards thrust of Clay’s hips, his body trying to brace itself against the surge of friction that comes with each stroke, but he’s the one who moves them faster, who braces his fingers to a fist on the sheets and pushes back harder, quicker, chasing down the rising tide of heat in his veins as surely as he’s pressing Clay’s breathing into the gasping pace of spiking pleasure with each movement.

“Clay,” Akane says, and he can’t keep himself from pressing a kiss to Clay’s mouth, from punctuating the hot slur of his words with lips and friction and soft heat against the part of Clay’s lips under his. Clay makes a sound, something low and a little startled, like he’s forgotten how to speak aloud, and Akane is going on without planning to, his words coming as fast from his throat as his breathing is working in his chest. “Clay, you feel so good, better even than I expected, I’m so--” breaking off as Clay rocks up hard, as Akane’s breathing catches and stalls into a moan in his throat. “ _God_.”

“Akane,” Clay answers back, and his fingers unwind from their hold to trail down along the inside line of Akane’s hip. “You.” There’s no end to the sentence, no conclusion to his statement, and Akane isn’t waiting for one because Clay is closing his fingers around him, steadying his hold and stroking carefully up over the flushed heat of his cock, and Akane is shuddering under the friction with the heat that spikes up his spine and tenses in the dip between his shoulderblades. His skin is flushed, his breathing is coming in gasps, but he’s still moving with the rhythm they began with and Clay is jerking up over him, his motion rushed and catching flares of sensation out into Akane’s body. Akane pulls back by an inch, enough to open his eyes and look down at Clay, and Clay’s gazing up at him, his eyes blown helplessly dark on heat and his mouth half-open on his incoherent sentence and his whole body hot under Akane, inside Akane, around Akane, the two of them tangled so close together Akane can’t draw a line to distinguish where he ends and Clay begins. They’re just together, the two of them, as close as their bodies can bring them and with even their breathing falling into sync, and Akane is starting to shake with rising tension and doesn’t make any attempt at all to hold it back or stall the inevitable conclusion.

“Clay,” he says, his voice shattering open on the heat in his chest to come out breathless, high, desperate in a way he couldn’t help if he cared to try. “Oh, oh god, Clay, I--you’re--” and then Clay’s fingers catch against the head of his cock, and Akane’s hips are bucking forward, and his voice is breaking off into a moan as he jerks and gasps and comes in sticky waves all across Clay’s chest. His body is tensing, his muscles flexing taut through the pulse of heat in him, but there’s that pressure inside him, now, something to clench around as he comes, until every wave of sensation brings its own follow-up just from the awareness of Clay pressing into him. Clay is gasping underneath him, breathless appreciation and Akane’s name tangled together into one sound, and against the blinding rush of heat Akane collects himself enough to fist his hand against the sheets and rock himself back, catching the very edge of his forgotten rhythm with desperate intention. He’s still trembling, his body still tensing through aftershocks; but under him Clay is groaning, is bucking up hard to thrust farther into him, and Akane gasps an inhale of shocked heat just as Clay’s hand at his hip tightens and Clay hisses and comes with a last uncoordinated thrust upward. Akane can feel the heat spilling inside him, can feel the rush of Clay coming into him like an echo of the bitter salt still clinging to the back of his tongue, and he whimpers through another shock of sensation, his cock twitching into a last spill of heat as his back arches and he quivers himself into exhausted relief.

They’re still for a long while after, Akane doesn’t know how long. Clay unwinds his fingers from around Akane after a moment, drapes his arm over the other’s back and reaches up with his clean hand to spread his fingers out across Akane’s shoulder, and Akane frees the sheets from his grip so he can settle his fingers into Clay’s hair; but that’s the only concession they make to movement, even as Akane feels sweat starting to dry to discomfort against the curve of his spine and the heat of Clay’s body starts to stick and catch at his skin. He’s happy to stay where he is, with his legs spread wide around Clay’s hips and the lingering pressure of Clay inside him as they both catch their breath, until finally it’s Clay who speaks first to break the quiet peace of exhaustion that has fallen over them both.

“God,” he manages, sounded winded and overheated at once, like what breath he can find for his lungs is dragging low and rougher than usual. “Akane.”

“Clay,” Akane says, turning his head in to breathe the other’s name against his skin like a kiss. “You were amazing.”

Akane can feel the way Clay laughs in a bright spill of disbelief. “ _I_ was? You were the one who did everything.”

“Mm,” Akane hums, acknowledgement without agreement, and presses closer so he can fit his mouth against the side of Clay’s neck in a kiss. “You don’t even have to try, you’re always fantastic.”

Clay laughs again. “You’re just buttering me up, now.”

“I am,” Akane admits. “I’m hoping I can get another round out of you before we have to go back to the dorms this evening.”

Clay groans wordless protest. “You’ve already had me twice, aren’t you satisfied yet?”

“Never,” Akane purrs. “I bet I can drain you dry before I let you go back to your common room.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Clay groans. “You’re...you’re like some kind of vampire. Of sex.”

“An incubus,” Akane tells him. “They’re called incubi.” He kisses at Clay’s throat again, opening his mouth wider to catch his teeth at the other’s skin. “I could be your incubus if you wanted.”

“‘Could be,’” Clay repeats. “I’m pretty sure you already are.” Akane hums amusement against Clay’s throat, kissing with more intention against the other’s collarbone, and Clay groans and slides his hand down to catch at Akane’s hip. “At least let me take a shower first.”

“Okay,” Akane allows. “As long as I can share with you.” He braces a hand against the bed and pushes himself up to look towards the corner of the room and the door he knew would be there. “Look, there’s one right there.”

Clay looks to follow, his eyes going wide with shock as he sees what Akane is gesturing towards. “What--that wasn’t here when we came in.”

“Clay,” Akane sighs, layering resigned amusement over his voice as he slides off Clay’s hips and sideways to slip off the bed. “You’re a _seventh year_ at a _school for magic_ , haven’t you learned not to trust the castle yet?”

“Hey,” Clay protests, getting an elbow underneath him so he can push himself upright over the sheets. “I don’t even know what this room _does_.”

Akane shrugs. “Gives us what we need,” he says with simple honesty, and reaches out to offer Clay a hand and tug him off the bed and to his feet. “Come on, let’s take a shower.”

A shower would be nice, Akane thinks, and maybe another round of breathless movement and gasping heat over the tangled sheets of the bed or the soft cushions of the couch. But really, with Clay reaching out to fit his hand into Akane’s grip, Akane thinks he has everything he needs already in his grasp.


	30. Delight

“So I’ve been thinking,” Akane says, as calmly as if they’re sitting over breakfast in the Great Hall or leaning over a shared textbook in the library. “Graduation is coming up in a few months.”

“Yeah,” Clay agrees, struggling for some kind of coherency around the heat sweeping up his spine with every movement of Akane’s fingers. “Do you really want to talk about tests right now?”

“Not tests.” Akane still sounds perfectly level, faintly contemplative, like he’s actually paying attention to his words instead of what he’s doing with his hand. Clay would protest, he thinks, likes to believe he would voice frustration to this; except that Akane’s fingers inside him are still moving with perfect rhythm, his motion completely unaffected by the idle patter of his words, and Clay can’t find a good reason to complain about the sound of Akane’s voice spilling warm over him while Akane’s touch eases him open and sparks flickering electricity up the length of his spine. “Graduation. After graduation, actually.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, “okay. What about it?” Akane’s touch slides, his fingers flexing to press inside Clay’s body, and Clay’s back arches, his breathing tearing from him in a sudden groan at the flush of heat that hits him from the pressure. “ _God_ , Akane.”

“Right there?” Akane asks, and pulls his hand back to push in for another rush of heat that surges high up Clay’s spine and curls his toes hard against the soft of the sheets under them. “I knew I was close.” His fingers shift, his touch working deeper into the other’s body, and he goes on speaking in that same casual tone, like he’s thinking out loud while his touch scatters Clay’s thoughts wide and away from the pattern of coherence. “Have you thought about what you want to do after school?”

“Why are we talking about this _now_?” Clay asks, mostly rhetorically. He’s gasping against the sheets, his shoulders flexing hard with each stroke Akane takes into him, and he doesn’t really want the other to stop any more than he cares about the incongruous conversation. “No, I haven’t.” Akane’s fingers push into him, forcing him open around the sudden forward pressure, and Clay shudders into a gasp, his whole body tensing around the strain of the other’s touch. “Why?”

“You’re going to graduate in two months,” Akane says, judgment casting his voice into shadow as he braces a hand at Clay’s hip and keeps working his fingers deeper. Clay turns his head down against the pillows under him to let the soft support the weight of his forehead; if he cared to look he could see how hot his cock is flushed, could see the way each forward push of Akane’s fingers twitches heat against his length. He shuts his eyes instead, more interested in focusing on the purr of Akane’s voice rushing over him like a wave than on the immediate physical evidence of the desire he can feel surging through him with every beat of his heart. “You really should have a plan for your future by now, Clay.”

“Oh my god,” Clay groans into the sheets without opening his eyes. “Are you actually going to tell me off for this _now_?”

“I’m not telling you off,” Akane tells him, so calm and level Clay believes him without even meaning to. “I’m just saying you should have a plan.” His fingers shift apart to push inside Clay, his wrist twisting to work the other open; Clay’s fingers close into a fist on the sheets under him, straining for traction while he reaches up to brace a hand against the head of the bed they’re both atop. “I have a plan.”

“Oh?” Clay says, reaching for something, anything to keep Akane talking so he can let his own focus give way to the force of Akane’s touch thrusting hard into him. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do research on magical creatures,” Akane says immediately, so fast Clay realizes the other was expecting the question, realizes that he entirely took the bait offered by Akane’s setup of the conversation. He would feel more self-conscious about this if he weren’t so busy gasping into the pillow under him as Akane’s fingers press into him to send waves of heat up his spine with as much unerring precision as if he can feel the friction of his touch more clearly than Clay can. “It’s fieldwork, mostly. Lots of travel to exciting foreign locations, meeting all kinds of interesting people and working with new creatures every day.”

“Oh,” Clay says, trying to make sense of Akane’s words as the other’s touch keeps scattering his focus with every motion. “Sounds like fun.” It’s a filler statement more than anything else, a way to stall briefly while he pieces together the implications of Akane’s words. “Lots of travel?”

“Yeah,” Akane says. He hasn’t pulled his fingers back since his last stroke forward; he’s bracing Clay’s hip against his motion, now, his fingers pressing close into the other’s skin while he flexes his touch inside Clay without pulling back. The force is different, the friction deeper and more deliberate than the thrusts; it makes Clay’s thighs tremble, makes his knees slide open in involuntary invitation while his cock jumps to strain towards his stomach. “To all kinds of places. Somewhere new every week, kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Clay understands that right away, without having to think about it at all. The swoop of unhappiness that drags at his stomach is almost enough to counter the surging heat spiking up the length of his spine. “You’ll be gone from home a lot?” He frowns against the pillow underneath him, twists his fingers tighter against the sheets. “I won’t be able to see very much of you, I guess.”

“Ah,” Akane says. “Well. About that.” He draws his fingers back by an inch, works them in again with slow deliberation under the motion, like he’s feeling his way through the action as much as through the conversation. “Sid says researchers often work in pairs. Friends, sometimes, but they tend to get sick of each other when they spend too much time together.” A slow stroke back, an easy thrust in. “Married couples are better, he said. It’s easy to find work as a pair who already spend all their time together.”

Clay turns his head against the pillow, opens his eyes to let his vision come back into focus on the tension of his fist on the sheets. His knuckles are tight on the fabric; he lets them ease deliberately, working through the motion step-by-step while he runs through Akane’s words, while he turns them over and over in his head to make sure he’s processed the implication from all sides. Finally his hand is relaxed, and his thoughts are clear, and when he opens his mouth his voice is as steady as it can be with Akane’s fingertips playing heat up his spine like he’s some novel kind of instrument.

“Akane.” Steady, level, deliberately even to counteract the surge of electricity tensing along his shoulderblades and low in his stomach. “Did. Are you proposing while _fingering_ me?”

There’s the tiniest pause of quiet. “Are you saying no?”

Clay can feel the laughter build inside his chest, starting low in his stomach and spreading up along the length of his spine and pressing against the rhythm of his breathing until it finally catches at the back of his tongue to turn itself over into audibility and spill past his lips as a bright bubble of laughter. He has no chance to hold it back even if he wanted to; it’s too warm, too irrepressible, until the best he can do is turn his face down against the pillow as his chest tightens on the sound of amusement purring up his throat and out over his tongue.

“That’s not an answer,” Akane tells him, but he sounds like he’s fighting back laughter too even as he draws his fingers back and free to touch at Clay’s hip instead. “Is the idea that ridiculous?”

Clay shakes his head against the pillow. “No,” he says, and lets himself tip to the side so he can roll over onto his back and blink up at Akane leaning over him. Akane’s smiling, his mouth twisting on that barely held-back laughter, and his eyes are bright behind the cover of his glasses, sparkling with happiness that says he knows Clay’s answer without having to hear it directly. “It’s not ridiculous. I’m not saying no.”

“‘Not saying no,’” Akane repeats, purring over the words in the back of his throat as he leans in closer. “Ooh, go on Clay, you know I love when you’re coy like that.”

“Shut up,” Clay says, the force of his words totally undermined by the delighted laughter still unravelling itself from his throat. He reaches out for the weight of Akane’s hair, his fingers catching to push the dark of it back from the other’s face, and Akane leans into the touch, his lips curving onto a smile as he tips in closer.

“Yes,” Clay says as Akane presses in against him, turning his head up until his nose bumps the other’s. “Let’s get married, Akane.”

“And travel the world to research magical creatures,” Akane says, the words coming warm against Clay’s mouth.

Clay laughs again. “Okay,” he says, “Sure. Anything you want.”

“Mm,” Akane hums. “Really it’s just you, you know, that I want.”

“Yeah,” Clay says, smiling so wide he can feel it crinkling at the corners of his eyes and completely unable to restrain his reaction or hold it back. “Me too.”

When he turns his head up, Akane is waiting to kiss Clay’s smile into the soft warmth of happiness.


	31. Starstruck

The world seems brighter after graduation.

Akane can’t explain it. He’s enjoyed the last seven years overall; even the worst of it, when he was still getting used to the star printed across his left eye and the whole of the school remembered the shrill screech of his mother’s voice screaming vile insults into the echo of the Great Hall, was better than the alternative, and things have only gotten better from there, until now he feels nearly nostalgic facing the end of classes and tests and homework. He’s looked forward to the start of classes every year since the first, has anticipated September with a bright, warm pressure in his chest that refused to ease until he saw Clay at the doorway of the Great Hall or stepping down from the platform of the train. School has been a pleasant comfort in his life, a point of stability even when much else was in disarray, and Akane has been expecting graduation without quite looking forward to it. But now NEWTs are over, and the ceremony is completed, and he’s stepping out onto the soft green of the grass outside the castle with a sense of freedom he didn’t expect to feel and a rising sense of excitement that only shines the brighter for the clear blue of the sky overhead.

Then again, that might have more to do with the company than otherwise.

“Oh,” Clay says from alongside him, tipping in against Akane’s shoulder as he lifts a hand to shade his eyes. “I didn’t think it was so bright.”

“Yes,” Akane tells him. “The sun did, in fact, rise this morning. Amazing how these things can take care of themselves without you.”

Clay huffs a laugh. “Don’t tease me, you know what I mean.”

Akane grins. “I do,” he says, and reaches out for Clay’s hand next to his own. Clay looks down to the fit of Akane’s fingers around his, his mouth tugging onto a smile that still looks faintly surprised, even after all this time, and Akane takes a step forward and tugs Clay in his wake. “Come with me.”

Clay does. He doesn’t ask where they’re going or why; maybe he’s just content to follow Akane’s lead, or maybe he’s as giddy on unexpected excitement as Akane feels right now. He follows at Akane’s heels, stumbling over dips in the grass underfoot and laughing when Akane teases him about it; by the time they get to the shore of the Great Lake they’re both giggling and too dizzy with adrenaline to stop even when they draw into earshot of the other students arrayed around the border of the Lake.

“Oh,” Clay says, breathless from running and laughing at once as they draw to a stop at the edge of the water. “What…?”

“Just wait,” Akane tells him, turning up to look at the blue of the sky overhead. Clay glances at him before following suit, squinting up at the bright of the midday sunshine. His hand in Akane’s hold shifts, his fingers sliding into a slightly more comfortable alignment; and then, just as Clay is taking a breath to say something else, the sky overhead bursts into color with a _crack_ that is met with a chorus of charmed _oohs!_ from the students lining the edge of the lake.

“ _Oh_ ,” Clay gasps, his fingers tightening hard on Akane’s. “Oh _wow_.”

“The school has fireworks for the graduating class every year,” Akane tells him. “They’re brighter so you can see them in the middle of the day, right after the ceremony.” He looks up the face of the castle to one of the windows higher up the wall and jerks his head towards the red hair just visible on the man gesturing through the motions of a spell towards the lake. “The Charms professor is always in charge of it.”

“That’s amazing,” Clay breathes. When Akane looks back at him his attention is still focused on the sky over the lake, his lips barely parted on starstruck shock. “I didn’t--oh!” He lifts his free hand to gesture. “Akane, look!”

Akane looks. There’s a star-shaped splash of silvery green across the bright canvas of the sky overhead, the color settling and darkening like it’s saturating the air; the silver fades, the green dips to shadow, and for a moment the glittering points of light shine black like pinpricks of night against the sunshine. Then they lighten again, coming back up out of the dark like daybreak, and they’re brighter, now, shining brilliant yellow to stand clear against even the shine of the sky behind them.

“Yellow and black,” Akane says, soft enough that only Clay will hear.

“Silver and green,” Clay replies. Akane tips his head to look at Clay and Clay glances back at him; they stare at each other for a moment. “Were those for us?”

Akane can feel his chest tense and ache with the sudden strain of too-much happiness; and then it eases, and he’s smiling, he’s laughing without any hesitation at all.

“I think they were,” he says. “Happy graduation, Clay.”

Clay laughs, his whole face glowing brighter even than the shine of the sky overhead; and then there’s another _pop_ from overhead, and he turns to look back up for the next spray of color over the surface of the lake, his eyes going wide and mouth going soft in surprise for the newest display.

Akane doesn’t look away. He has Clay’s hand in his, and their future laid out in front of them, and with the fireworks cracking into color over the lake for backdrop, he can see stars in Clay’s eyes.


	32. Epilogue: Knowing

“ _Akane_ ,” Clay whimpers, attempting to give voice to the protest he knows he ought to feel, at least, even if only in hypotheticals. “We’re supposed to be at work in five minutes.”

“Mm,” Akane hums, the dark of his hair barely visible under the weight of the blankets collected around Clay’s hips. “I can do a lot in five minutes.”

“Not enough,” Clay tells him. He has a hand against the heavy fall of Akane’s hair, his fingers tangled into the dark of the locks; he’s trying to convince himself to pull enough to urge Akane up and away from the temptingly slow path the other is kissing along the hem of Clay’s shirt, but thus far his body has been surprisingly uncooperative in spite of his most rational internal arguments. “You have to stop or we’re going to be late.”

“That’s true,” Akane says. “Goodness knows we can’t be late for work.”

“I’m _serious_.”

“So am I.” Akane’s hand slides up, his fingers catching under the loose hem of Clay’s shirt to skim the bottom edge of the other’s ribcage, and Clay catches a startled breath as sensation prickles itself sharply up the whole length of his spine. “We’re _field researchers_ , Clay, no one’s going to care if we start a little late.”

“You say that every morning,” Clay complains. Akane hums unabashed laughter against his stomach and slides his fingers down under the waistband of Clay’s boxers, and Clay’s fingers tighten into the other’s hair with a force that has no intent behind it of pushing the other away. “You--I thought you wanted to sleep in.”

“I did,” Akane says. “Now I want to suck your dick. Don’t you want me to?”

“It’s not that I don’t--”

“I don’t see what the problem is, then.” Akane’s fingers are inside Clay’s clothes, now, drawing the soft of the fabric off the other’s hips as Akane’s mouth presses damp heat against the mark of the elastic on Clay’s skin. Clay shudders with the friction, his stomach flexing against the ticklish motion, and Akane purrs something that sounds like a laugh and feels like pure distraction against his hip. “It’s only a few minutes, Clay.”

“It’s _not_ a few minutes,” Clay protests. “You--you always say it’s just a blowjob, and then afterwards when I’m all warm and distracted you start talking about how turned on you are too, and then you start touching yourself and--and then it’s the whole morning gone.”

Akane’s laugh hums against the inside of Clay’s thigh. Clay whimpers wordlessly. “So we’ll work into the evening,” Akane tells him. “You don’t know that’s how it will go, anyway.”

“I do know,” Clay says, catching his fingers into Akane’s hair to collect the weight of it in his grip and push it back and off the other’s face. “I know _you_.”

“Mm,” Akane hums again, and then he lifts his head enough to let the blankets slide down and off his shoulders. He’s smiling, the soft, sultry one that turns the blue of his eyes dark and smoky; with his hair caught in Clay’s hold the star in his left eye is clear to see, a pale outline that catches the early-morning light like the first hint of dawn against the dark of the morning sky. Akane’s gaze trails over Clay’s features, his focus wandering across the lines of Clay’s face and the curve of his mouth, and Clay can feel his breathing catch in his chest at the way Akane is looking at him, as if there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather be paying attention to.

“You do,” Akane agrees, his gaze coming back to meet Clay’s. “And I know you.” He ducks his head down without looking away, maintaining eye contact as he purses his lips to breathe the warm damp of an exhale against Clay’s skin. Clay tenses, his whole body straining on heat as he groans, and Akane’s lips draw into a smile as he watches whatever telltale expression is playing across Clay’s face. “And I know you can’t deny your husband anything he wants.”

“I can,” Clay protests, but his knee is tipping open wider as Akane’s breath gusts across his skin and his hold at the other’s hair is shifting into more of a bracing grip than the push of a rejection. “I can too.”

“Sure you can,” Akane says with his tone layered into tolerant disbelief. “Do you really want me to stop?”

Clay thinks about the work they have to do today, thinks about the cooler hours of the morning giving way to midday heat and the need for Cooling Charms that comes with it; thinks about working through the evening, about the way the sunset glows into red and orange and purple across the sky and the way Akane’s hair sometimes catches the shine into the color of flame for a brief, startling moment. He thinks about toppling back into their overlarge tent after full night has fallen, about Akane laughing against the back of his neck and the effort of the day melting into slow, unhurried kisses that always take longer than they are meant to and leave them both drowsy and sated over the sheets.

And then he looks at Akane still watching him, with delighted affection warm behind his eyes, and his hair heavy against Clay’s hands, and his mouth curving on a smile as sure of Clay as Clay is of Akane, and when Clay sighs into surrender it comes with the curve of a smile at his mouth.

“No,” he says. “Let’s stay here a little longer.”

As long as they’re together, there’s no hurry to be anywhere else.


End file.
